Japan Record Defense Budget Aims At Curbing China Threat

Investor's Business Daily ^ | January 16, 2015 | IBD EDITORIALS

[raptor22]

Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory.

As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China's assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the larger South China Sea. Chinese military doctrine refers to establishing dominance over what it calls the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea.

Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has laid claim to two disputed chains: the Paracel Islands, about 200 miles from the coast of Vietnam, and the Spratly Islands in the southeastern part of the South China Sea.

Chinese government writings refer to the waters surrounding China as "blue soil" and the islands in these waters as Chinese territory. They include the East China Sea and the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese), over which tensions have arisen as Beijing disputes Tokyo's legitimate claims and has engaged in a series of military provocations.

[meatloaf]

They’ll still have India to contend with. That’s going to be an interesting match up. India will pass China population wise in the near future.

[lentulusgracchus]

The Japanese need to wake the heck up and understand that Uncle Sugar won’t always be there to protect them.

Japan's not "wak[ing] the heck up" is precisely What the US-Japanese defense arrangement was supposed to prevent. A peaceful Japan is, we discovered in 1941, much preferable to a "Pacific" Japan.

[lentulusgracchus]

I managed to state that backwards. A peaceful Japan was the intention of postwar U. S. defense policy.