Taiwanese and Japanese legislators: China's threat necessitates more military spending.

 

Taiwanese and Japanese legislators: China's threat necessitates more military spending.

 

Reuters, December 11, Taiwan In response to the "sad reality" of the danger from China and North Korea, Japan needs to expand its military budget, a senior member of the country's ruling Liberal Democratic Party stated on Sunday while visiting Taiwan.

Japan and Taiwan, which are both democratically run and governed by China, do not have official diplomatic ties, but they have strong informal contacts and similar worries about China, particularly its rising military activity nearby. Former industry minister and LDP policy head Koichi Hagiuda declared during a visit to Taipei that Japan has "walked the path of peace" since World War Two and that this route will not alter in the future.

 

 

He said at a symposium on Japan-Taiwan relations, "However, just chanting the word peace is of course not enough for our peace to be safeguarded."

As Japan sets its budget for the following year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has already made plans to increase defence spending from its current level of 1% of GDP to 2% within five years. That would increase Japan's yearly defence spending from 5.4 trillion yen to more than 11 trillion yen ($80.55 billion), making it the third-largest military budget in the world, after China and the United States at their current levels.

Hagiuda cited North Korean missile testing as well as China's dramatic rise in military spending as justifications for Japan's increased defence spending.

 

"Half measures have no value at all in the face of such a terrible reality."He emphasised that in order to protect lives and the peace, Japan's defence capabilities must be expanded immediately, not in five years. "It's important to demonstrate unequivocally that we are capable of making any would-be aggressor reconsider," In an effort to vent its resentment at Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in August, China organised military exercises close to Taiwan. These exercises included firing five missiles into the sea near Okinawa, inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. Major U.S. military bases are located in Japan, notably one on Okinawa, which is close to Taiwan and would be essential for any U.S. support during a Chinese attack.

 

 

Although it is unclear if it would send troops to aid Taiwan in a war with China, the United States is required by law to give Taiwan the tools it needs to defend itself.

 

The late former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated in a speech to a think tank in Taiwan last December that Beijing needed to understand that Japan and the United States could not watch as China attacked Taiwan.