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Japan signals military upgrade

Sydney Morning Herald - January 9, 2013

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Martin Fackler, Tokyo – Japan's new conservative government has announced a review of national military strategy that analysts said was aimed at offsetting China's growing military power and that may increase defence spending for the first time in a decade.

The Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, ordered his government to replace the nation's five-year military spending plan and to review defence guidelines adopted in 2010 by the left-leaning Democratic Party, which his party defeated in elections last month.

Those guidelines called for gradual reductions in defence spending, and also in the size of Japan's military, particularly in the number of tanks and infantry members.

Mr Abe had promised during the election campaign to strengthen the military to defend Japan's control of islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by China.

On Tuesday, Japan summoned the Chinese ambassador for the first time since Mr Abe's government won power on December 26 to "strongly protest" against the presence of official ships in waters around the disputed islands. The foreign ministry said it had told China to stop sending vessels to the area around the chain controlled by Japan under the name Senkakus, but claimed by China as the Diaoyus.

The ministry last summoned acting Chinese ambassador Han Zhiqiang on December 13 to file a strong protest after Beijing sent a plane to the area. Japan scrambled fighter jets in response. That was the first incursion by a Chinese state aircraft into Japanese airspace since monitoring began in 1958.

Mr Abe did not release details of his intent on the military revisions, but news reports said the replacement plan would probably reverse the Democrats' cuts, starting with a 120 billion yen ($1.3 billion) increase in the military budget in the 2013 fiscal year, which begins in April. That would be the first increase in military spending since 2002, as Japan tightened its belt during a long economic decline.

The reports said the spending plan, proposed by members of Mr Abe's governing Liberal Democratic Party, would seek to increase the number of ground troops, strengthen air and sea defences around the disputed islands and buy new early warning aircraft to guard against Chinese intrusions near the islands, as well as missile launchings by North Korea.

The reports said the plan could also include financing for a study on acquiring Osprey aircraft, US vertical-take-off transport planes whose introduction last year to a Marine airfield on Okinawa set off protests. The Osprey can fly further and faster than Japan's helicopters.

Despite a decade of defence cuts, analysts said Japan last year had the world's sixth-largest military budget, spending %4.65 trillion.

[The New York Times, Agence France-Presse.]