China’s opposition to South Korea’s decision to host the US THAAD missile defense system shows Beijing believes neighboring countries must put China’s national interests ahead of their own, a US expert said Wednesday.
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The defense ministry’s budget allocation is a 2.3 percent increase from this year’s apportionment and will total more than 5 trillion yen (48.42 billion USA dollars), as the government under Abe continues to push to expand the scope of its Self-Defense Forces at home and overseas, and press for constitutional amendment to achieve this despite widespread public opposition and condemnation.
Despite the government struggling to finance ballooning social welfare costs as the country continues to rapidly age and the population simultaneously shrink, as it grapples with public debt at 240 percent the size of its economy, which itself is stagnant, and is swimming against the tide in its bid to reverse decades of deflation, the government’s defense spending is continuing to swell disproportionately.
Washington’s influence also explains the 75 billion yen that will be set aside to purchase a fleet of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike fighters.
If approved, the budget proposal for 5.17 trillion yen (S$68.5 billion) formally submitted yesterday would be the nation’s fifth straight annual increase in military spending. These locations are closer to the Senkaku islands, the chain of islands where both China and Japan claim territorial rights. The budget also proposes funds to dispatch extra personnel to the Philippines and Vietnam to enhance intelligence-gathering in the South China Sea.
Speaking to Sputnik earlier this month, Valery Kistanov, head of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed out that Japan’s justification for increasing its military budget are specious.
Another JPY74.6bn ($720m) will used to station guard units on the southern islands of Miyakojima and Amami Oshima.
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China has since tested this red line by sending PLAN warships close to the Senkakus but not close enough to trigger a Japanese military response. Japan lodged a strong diplomatic protest over the Chinese provocation.
