Xi Jinping’s Rise Came With New Attention to Dispute With Japan

By JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — The new air defense zone declared by China has been approved by Xi Jinping, the culmination of more than a year of pressure by Beijing to weaken Japan’s grip on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, and by extension to expand China’s long-term access to the Western Pacific.
As Mr. Xi amassed power in the past year, he voiced increasing displeasure with Japan, and in a curt, impromptu encounter in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September with the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Mr. Xi said Japan must face “history squarely,” according to an account in China’s state-run news media.
Mr. Xi has rebuffed Mr. Abe’s requests for a formal summit meeting, another sign of Mr. Xi’s firm stance on Japan.
Mr. Xi’s position as leader of the Communist Party and chairman of the military commission that runs China’s armed forces made him the primary decision maker on issues like the air defense zone, Chinese experts said. 

Over the past year, they say, he has been particularly attentive to the East China Sea dispute.
Unlike some other Chinese leaders, Mr. Xi had little involvement with Japan as he climbed the ranks of the Communist Party.
On a visit to Japan in 2009 as vice president, he was granted an audience with the emperor, met numerous politicians and was treated to a gala dinner. 

In 2001, when he was governor of Fujian Province, he toured the prefecture of Nagasaki and visited Okinawa. 

He has spoken little of these trips, although as vice president he did welcome the governors of Nagasaki and Shizuoka when they came to Beijing, Japanese officials say.
Most likely he sees the country as a policy lever, said Rana Mitter, a historian at Oxford University and the author of “Forgotten Ally,” an account of China’s struggle with Japan from 1937 to 1945.
“He does not appear to have any direct experience with Japan or connection with it through his family background,” Mr. Mitter said. 

“This is different from some other politicians, for instance Bo Xilai, who courted Japanese business quite strongly through his period as mayor of Dalian and later as commerce minister.” 

Mr. Bo is the disgraced Communist Party leader of the city of Chongqing now serving a life sentence in prison.
The idea for the air defense identification zone had been circulating within the Chinese military for some time before it reached Mr. Xi’s level, said Jia Qingguo, professor of international relations at Beijing University.
The military was acutely aware that other countries, including Japan and the United States, had air defense zones but China did not, he said.
As the tensions mounted this year in the East China Sea, with Chinese and Japanese planes flying in close quarters over the Senkaku islands, Japan often complained that China’s planes were flying in the Japanese air defense zone.
The leadership reasoned that if Japan had an air defense zone for the past 40 years, China should have one, too, as a way of achieving parity, and as a tool to eventually wrest the islands from Japan’s control, Mr. Jia said.
But Tokyo’s position on the islands is simply that there is no dispute, that the islands belong to Japan and there is nothing more to discuss.
It is this Japanese position that Mr. Xi and his top military and foreign policy advisers wanted to change.
China’s top foreign policy makers believed that China’s new air defense zone overlapping with Japan’s and covering the islands would be “another way to force Japan to recognize there is a dispute,” and come to the negotiating table, Mr. Jia and other experts said.
Even before Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, he was in charge of a small leading group of maritime affairs that had principal responsibility for the problems in the East China Sea — both in the air and on the sea.
It was a period when the dispute over the islands had spilled onto the streets of China, with government-sanctioned anti-Japanese protests, and Mr. Xi’s quick ascent to the policy making group on the islands signaled his plans to take overall control of the issue.
After becoming general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, and then assuming the presidency of the country in March, Mr. Xi toured important military installations, including ports where China is building its blue water navy — another signal of his long-term interest in gaining unfettered access in the Western Pacific.
Mr. Xi told a Politburo meeting this summer that China must become a “maritime strong power,” according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
In late October, Mr. Xi called a conference of senior party leaders, including the six other members of the Politburo Standing Committee and the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, to discuss how China should maintain good relations with its neighbors in Asia.
“The fundamental guiding policy for our country’s diplomacy with its periphery is to treat neighbors with friendship and as partners,” Mr. Xi said.
But it was clear that Japan was not included in the friendly group of neighbors — those consisted chiefly of countries in Southeast Asia — and a few days later, the Chinese Ministry of Defense intensified its warnings to Japan over the disputed islands.
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng, said that China would consider it “an act of war” if Japan carried out its threat and shot down a Chinese drone flying over the islands. 

“We would have to take decisive measures to counterattack,” Mr. Geng said, the most warlike words from China in the dispute so far.
A recent account in a Hong Kong-based magazine, Asia Weekly, which often carries reliable reports on Beijing’s foreign policy deliberations, described the imposition of the air defense zone as a “great sea-air strategic breakthrough for China.” 

The magazine said Mr. Xi finalized the decision four months ago.
The breakthrough the article referred to was the piercing of what China sees as a boundary that stretches from the southernmost Japanese islands toward the east coast of Taiwan and joining the South China Sea.
“China is no longer focusing just on Senkaku Island, not only on the gas field of the East China Sea median line, but this is a way of breaking through the first island chain to reach the ocean,” the account said.

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Japan Seeks Friends in Asia—but Not China

China needs to think twice before taking aggressive actions in the South China Sea

By Bruce Einhorn and Matthew Philips 

Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is the first Japanese premier to visit all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

In late November, Emperor Akihito will make the first visit by a Japanese monarch to India. 

Not on either dignitary’s itinerary—China. 

And that’s no accident.
Abe, a foreign-policy hawk who’s clashed with the Chinese over the ownership of some Japanese islands, wants to shore up relations with the swath of nations forming a semicircle around China. 

Some have their own beefs, including India, which shares a disputed border with China. 

Abe will visit India next year, and in mid-December will host Asean leaders. 

It’s all part of his campaign to thwart China’s rulers, who, as he wrote in a column last December, see the South China Sea as “Lake Beijing.”

This is powerful talk. 

China is throwing its considerable weight around more in the region, and it may react aggressively.

As all sides buy more warships, missiles, and fighter jets, such confrontations could escalate. 

“Nobody has said this is surrounding China,” says Chiaki Akimoto, director of RUSI Japan, an arm of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a think tank. 

What Abe wants “is just a friendship network with nations around China.”
Whatever Japan’s policy is called, Abe is even pursuing it in areas within China’s sphere of influence. 

In November, he took his charm campaign to Cambodia and Laos. 

Despite a pacifist tradition dating to the end of World War II, Japan is increasing military cooperation with Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which have felt China’s wrath over territorial claims. 

Abe’s actions, says Tetsuo Kotani, research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, make clear that “China needs to think twice before taking assertive actions” in the South China Sea. 

The official China Daily dismissively says Abe has been “hyping South China Sea tension to gain popularity in the region.”
One reason Abe is getting a warm welcome is that China’s defense spending hit $172 billion last year, up 64 percent from 2008, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

India has one Russian-made nuclear submarine and may lease a second. 

It just took delivery of its third aircraft carrier. 

It has test-fired a supersonic cruise missile that can reach Beijing.
In the same Dec. 27 column where he made his “Lake Beijing” comment, Abe wrote, “The ongoing disputes... mean that Japan’s top foreign-policy priority must be to expand the country’s strategic horizons... I envisage a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific.” 

Abe also wants Japan to join the Five Power Defence Arrangements of Britain, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Operation Dawn Blitz: retaking the Senkaku islands

In June, Japan and the U.S. conducted Dawn Blitz, a military exercise in California that included a mock assault on a remote island. 

Japan’s self-defense force wouldn’t have joined such an exercise five years ago, says James Brown, a military fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. 

The stress on offensive action has spread to the navy. 

“We see the commissioning of warships that in external appearance look like assault ships,” says Dean Cheng, East Asian military analyst for the Heritage Foundation. 

“These are things that Japan shied away from.” 

Abe has long backed repealing the article of the country’s constitution that renounces war forever.
As the region’s militaries get bigger, so do the risks. 

“It strikes me how much the current situation in Asia looks like a replay of the 1930s in Europe,” says Daniel Goure, a vice president with the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. 

Brown warns that “there are going to be a lot more submarines, a lot more amphibious vessels, a lot more aircraft, and we haven’t gotten agreement on how everybody is going to avoid accidents. It’s a huge problem.”

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Japa Looks for Asian Allies to Say No to China

By Bruce Einhorn
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviews a guard of honor with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 16

Two of the poorest countries in Asia suddenly were front and center over the weekend in the growing battle for influence between Japan and China. 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Laos and Cambodia, the first trip by a Japanese leader to the two Southeast Asian countries since 2000. 

Abe left with some modest achievements, such as agreements to help fund road, bridge, and rail infrastructure.
The point of the trip, though, was more about sending a message to Beijing. 

Abe took office less than a year ago and has already visited all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

That’s a first for a Japanese leader. 

With Japan and China continuing to squabble over islands in the East China Sea, Abe is looking to win support among countries in Southeast Asia, even such places as Cambodia and Laos that traditionally have been close to China. 

Meanwhile, Abe has yet to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping or Premier Li Keqiang.
Since many ASEAN nations have territorial disputes of their own with China, Abe no doubt sees an opportunity to build Japanese influence with countries that can agree on the threat posed by their common rival. 

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, for instance, are all facing challenges from China, which claims nearby islands.
As he tries to solidify ties with the Southeast Asians, Abe has gotten a boost from China’s clumsy response to the tragedy in the Philippines. 

Angry at President Benigno Aquino over the Philippines’s unwillingness to recognize China’s claims for some South China Sea rocks, the Chinese government initially offered a measly $100,000 to assist in the recovery from Typhoon Haiyan. 

While the Chinese government later boosted the amount to $1.6 million, the assistance is still peanuts compared with the $10 million from Japan, not to mention the even more generous offers from Japanese allies: The U.S has pledged $20 million and Australia $28 million.

Japan could hardly have asked for a better reminder that China may not be the friendliest of neighbors. Countries like the Philippines are especially open to Abe’s message, since their economies and militaries are tiny compared with China’s. 

Japan is providing ships for the Philippine coast guard and considering selling vessels to Vietnam, too. 

Japan is also conducting counterterrorism exercises with Indonesia.
The Japanese aid should help combat another common enemy—pirates in the Indian Ocean—and perhaps help ASEAN’s member states withstand heat from their giant neighbor. 

“Some Asean member countries are very much vulnerable to China’s economic and political influence,” says Tetsuo Kotani, research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. 

By boosting military cooperation, “we are giving assurance we will stand by those ASEAN member countries,” he says. 

“As China’s neighboring countries develop their own capability, China needs to think twice before taking assertive actions.”
China’s official media is not amused. 

“Abe is trying to hijack some countries that are not contending parties to the South China Sea issue, forcing them to take sides,” Lu Yaodong, director of the department of diplomacy at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute of Japanese Studies, told the official China Daily newspaper, in a story headlined, “Abe busy in ASEAN blitz aimed at Beijing.” 

According to the China Daily, experts in China believe the Japanese have been “hyping South China Sea tension to gain popularity in the region.”

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The Senkaku Boomerang

Japan needs U.S. support against Chinese bullying. The more explicit the Obama Administration is that the Senkakus are Japanese, the likelier Beijing is to back down.
The Wall Street Journal

Japan Coast Guard vessel PS206 Houou sails in front of Uotsuri island, one of the disputed islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea on August 18, 2013.

China's leaders may have thought that by frequently dispatching ships and planes into Japan's territory around the tiny Senkaku Islands they would cause Tokyo to bow to their demands. 

Instead, their strategy of harassment and intimidation has accomplished the opposite—and then some.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has rallied Japanese to defend their territorial sovereignty, and he may succeed in reinterpreting the Japanese constitution to allow Japan to come to the military aid of its allies. 

The threat to the Senakakus has strengthened Tokyo's alliance with Washington, with the two countries agreeing earlier this month to bolster their military ties, including the deployment of U.S. P-8 maritime surveillance planes in Japan and stationing a second missile-defense radar.
Japan has also strengthened its ties with Southeast Asia.
Smaller regional powers have come to see Tokyo as a potential defender, along with the U.S., of the peace against a hegemonic Middle Kingdom.
In an interview with the Journal last week, Mr. Abe, fresh from a successful tour of the region, signalled his willingness to take up a greater leadership role and issued a warning to Beijing.
"There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," he said.
Mr. Abe's remarks were followed by more clear-eyed talk from Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, who on Tuesday accused China of endangering the peace by sending its coast guard vessels into the Senkaku waters more than once a week: "I believe the intrusions by China in the territorial waters around the Senkaku islands fall in the 'grey zone' (between) peacetime and an emergency situation."
Japan has begun conducting amphibious exercises that simulate the kind of operations that might be needed to defend or retake the Senkakus.
It is expected to create a new unit tasked with such missions.
The danger now is that the chances of accident, miscalculation or even a shooting incident grow with each Chinese foray near the islands.
That's what makes Japan's demonstration of political resolve and military capability all the more important, but Japan cannot be left on its own.
The U.S. took the Senkakus from Japan after World War II and returned them in the early 1970s, effectively settling the question of their sovereignty for American purposes.
The more explicit the Obama Administration is that the Senkakus are Japanese, the likelier Beijing is to back down.
In the long term, there may be a possibility for Japan and China to resolve their differences by freezing the status quo and deferring resolution of the dispute to future generations.
That was the view Deng Xiaoping had of the matter, and current leader Xi Jinping would do well to follow in those footsteps.
The alternative is to further alienate China from its neighbors, and further call into doubt the promise—and the hope—that China's rise will be peaceful.

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China's Threat: Japan’s New Attack Force

Japan’s rapid moves to develop an amphibious capability is sending a clear signal on Senkaku islands.

By Trefor Moss

When US President Barack Obama cancelled his trip to Asia in early October, America’s regional allies wondered whether America, just like its president, was becoming fatally weakened by Washington’s systemic failures – whether one day soon it might no longer have the power or the energy to get things done on the world stage.
Japan’s leaders may have shared those concerns, but if so they didn’t let on. 

Even as Washington tied itself up in knots, the Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee (SCC) – the “2+2” comprising the countries’ foreign and defense ministers – was announcing a potentially far-reaching revamp of the Japan-U.S. alliance. 

As part of their new vision, the Japanese military will shoulder a greater share of the joint security burden, something the U.S. government – and some Japanese conservatives – have wanted to happen for a very long time.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a leading proponent of the more active Japan that is emerging. 

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal this week, Abe asserted the view that “Japan is expected to exert leadership … in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific,” and warned China that the outcome would not be peaceful if it should try to change the status quo by force – even as Japan scrambled fighter aircraft on three consecutive days in response to Chinese activity.
Against this worrying backdrop, the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) and the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) have both been enhancing their capabilities with a view to protecting the country’s maritime interests. 

Abe may not have initiated this process, but he is doing what he can to accelerate it, having handed the Ministry of Defense (MoD) its first budget increase in over a decade at the start of the year.
Most eye-catching of all – especially in light of Japan’s disagreements with China – has been Tokyo’s emphasis on the JSDF’s amphibious capabilities. 

The news this week that the MoD is prepping a major amphibious landing drill that began on November 1 was a restatement of this ambition, and the exercise will be the latest in a long series of moves designed to equip the JSDF with a credible amphibious deterrent.

Dry run: A Maritime Self-Defense Force hovercraft lands on a California beach during a joint drill between the Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. Marines on June 24.

Walk Before You Can Run (Up Any Beaches)
If Japan is to assume a greater share of the regional security burden, then the JSDF needs to acquire the capability to manage the country’s territorial disputes independently, without U.S. forces. 

It can already operate independently in most respects, and it already possesses most elements of an amphibious capability, notably three Osumi-class landing ship tanks (LSTs) alongside six landing craft air cushions (LCACs) and a mix of smaller landing craft, and now also the Hyuga- and Izumo-class helicopter destroyers to supply the necessary air lift. 

However, a ship-to-shore capability has always been the missing piece of the puzzle. 

Beach-storming was taboo for the JSDF – something deemed too aggressive for the country’s pacifist constitution.
Changes in the political wind have now made amphibious operations seem more palatable to Japanese decision-makers. 

However, the scale of the upcoming drill – which the MoD says will involve 34,000 personnel – should not be confused with the size of the amphibious force Japan is currently assembling. 

The new Amphibious Preparatory Unit – as the MoD is calling its L-plate marines, at least for now – will be a relatively small team: a specialist unit of the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), rather than a fully fledged Marine Corps. 

It will have 700 men initially, expanding to 3,000 over time.
The unit’s job will be to respond “to attacks on remote islets,” as the MoD’s 2014 budget request explains. There is only one group of remote islets that Japan really has in mind: the Senkaku islands, whose ownership it disputes with China. 

While Japan also has territorial disputes with Russia and South Korea, those islands are not under Japanese control, and it is extremely hard to imagine Tokyo dispatching troops in a bid to capture them. 

The Senkaku islands, on the other hand, are under Japanese control, and this enables Tokyo to frame an amphibious landing as a defensive operation designed to protect or to recapture the Senkaku in response to Chinese aggression.
Japan’s marines, in other words, will be the first in the world tasked exclusively with defending one specific, tiny and uninhabited location.
There are three parts to the process of building this new deterrent: teaching the new marines how to be marines, equipping the unit with the right capabilities, and, more broadly, reconfiguring the JSDF and JCG’s posture in southwest Japan.
By all accounts, the learning part is proceeding rapidly. 

The November exercise will build on other amphibious drills the GSDF has undertaken, including participation since 2005 in the regular “Iron Fist” exercises in the U.S. 

More significantly, the JSDF sent an amphibious task force across the Pacific to take part in the “Dawn Blitz” exercise in July, in what was regarded as a breakthrough demonstration of the JSDF’s fast-improving amphibious knowhow. 

According to Grant Newsham, a former U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the GSDF, what the Japanese military did at Dawn Blitz was nothing short of “historic,” not just as a demonstration of amphibious landings, but as a sign of the GSDF and the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s newfound ability to work together – joint operations being a traditional blind spot for the Japanese military, but a must for amphibious missions.
Bilateral bonds: Ground Self-Defense Force troops train with the U.S. Marines on Guam last September to 'recapture' an isolated island that's hypothetically fallen into enemy hands.

Caveat Emptor
The MoD’s 2014 budget request clearly states its procurement objectives in terms of equipping the new marine unit. 

Unsurprisingly, given the central role the U.S. Marine Corp (USMC) have assumed in training their Japanese counterparts, the Japanese unit is following the USMC playbook.
The ship-to-shore gap will be filled with amphibious assault vehicles – small numbers of test AAVs are already being acquired – and the MoD is studying the MV-22 Osprey with a view to initiating procurement in 2015. 

Not mentioned in the budget request is the F-35B, the STOVL version of the US’s new frontline fighter aircraft, which the US Marines will operate (Japan is currently procuring only the conventional F-35A). 

The ability to operate fast jets from Okinawa means that the Japanese marines may not require F-35Bs as air cover, given that their sole focus will be the Senkaku, but in time a requirement for a marine-specific fighter may emerge.
However, while following the USMC’s well-worn procurement path may be the easiest option, it will not yield the best results, according to critics of U.S. Marine procurement from within the USMC itself. 

David Fuquea, an associate professor at the U.S. Navy War College, regards the Osprey as “the most revolutionary platform for amphibious operations since the helicopter,” and strongly encourages the JSDF to buy it. 

However, he says the JSDF should part ways with the U.S. Marines when it comes to the AAV – which he dismisses as World War II technology – and he instead advises Japan to buy highly mobile, tougher vehicles as well as mobile artillery which can be transported, along with the marines themselves, by the Osprey.
Fuquea’s argument is compelling given Japan’s single objective of holding or capturing the Senkaku. 

The JSDF will need to get boots on the ground as quickly as possible in the event of a conflict – something the Osprey delivers – but the marines then need the right equipment to hold their position once they get there. And if their task is to dislodge Chinese forces that have already landed, Fuquea warns that slow-moving AAVs are unlikely to survive as they lumber towards the beach: he says Japan needs more high-speed landing craft and armored vehicles that are more survivable than AAVs if they are to succeed.

An MV-22B Osprey assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 266 (Reinforced), 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepares to takeoff during flight operations aboard the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), while sailing off the coast of Onslow Beach, N.C., Jan. 29, 2013.

Looking South
The new marine unit looks set to be based in Sasebo, in western Kyushu, but that is not the nearest of locations for a unit with its attention trained only on the Senkaku.
The JSDF is currently reinforcing elsewhere in Okinawa Prefecture, of which the Senkaku are a part. 

The GSDF is deploying a new “coastal observation unit” to Yonaguni island – the nearest point to the Senkaku at the end of the Ryukyu chain – and is reportedly looking at the option of deploying anti-ship missiles to nearby Ishigaki (though this has not been confirmed by the MoD). 

It is not hard to imagine some marine units moving south to one of these locations at some point in the future, to put the Senkaku within easier reach.
In the meantime, the Coast Guard unit based in Ishigaki is also receiving investment – and personal encouragement from Shinzo Abe – as a 600-man Senkaku patrol unit is established there. 

This new JCG unit will be the civilian equivalent of the new marine regiment – an outfit tasked solely with monitoring and protecting the Senkaku from China.
So while budget cuts and political gridlock may indeed undermine the ability of the U.S. to intervene in regional disputes, Japan is sending a very clear signal to China: it plans to hold onto the Senkaku islands, with or without American help.

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Japan will stand up to China

BBC News

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says other countries want Japan to adopt a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter the growing power of China.
Mr Abe told the Wall Street Journal there were "concerns that China was trying to change the status quo by force, rather than by the rule of law".
Relations between China and Japan have been strained over recent years.
China said on Saturday that if Japan shot down Chinese drones, this would be considered "an act of war" by Beijing.
The statement was referring to reports that Mr Abe had approved defence plans that envisaged using air force planes to shoot down unmanned Chinese aircraft in Japanese airspace.
Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.
The islands, in the East China Sea, are controlled by Tokyo, but coveted by Beijing.
But analysts say the nations' rivalry reflects the power shift created by China's meteoric economic and diplomatic rise while Japan has been mired in a two-decade economic slump.
In the interview, Mr Abe said he had realised that "Japan is expected to exert leadership not just on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific".
He promised policies to counter Japan's waning influence.
Other countries wanted Japan to stand up to China, Mr Abe said without naming any.
"There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," Mr Abe says.
"So it shouldn't take that path, and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community."
The interview comes days after Mr Abe was reported to approved defence plans to intercept and shoot down foreign unmanned aircraft that ignore warnings to leave Japanese airspace.

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China's threat: Japan won't tolerate use of force to change regional status quo

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

ASAKA, Japan -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Japanese troops on Sunday that Japan would not tolerate the use of force to change the region's status quo, comments likely to rile Beijing which is locked in a long and bitter territorial dispute with Tokyo.
"Use of force for changing the status quo" is an expression often used by Japanese politicians and security experts to refer to what they see as China's aggressive maritime expansion in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
Abe's comment are the second in as many days in which he has effectively said Japan is ready to be more assertive towards China.
Abe is seen as a nationalist who wishes to revise a post-war pacifist constitution drafted by the United States and strengthen Japan's defense posture.
His comment, made at an annual troops review, come after the Chinese Defense Ministry warned Japan not to underestimate China's resolve to take whatever measures necessary to protect itself.
"Development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles by North Korea. Provocation against our sovereignty. The security environment surrounding Japan is getting tougher," Abe told the military review, which consisted of some 3,900 troops, 240 vehicles and 50 aircraft.
"In order to show our firm national intention that changing the status quo by force will not be tolerated, we need to carry out various activities such as surveillance and information gathering."
Ties between Asia's two largest economies deteriorated sharply after Japan bought three of the Senkaku islets from a private owner in September 2012, sparking large protests and boycotts of Japanese goods across China.
Patrol ships from both countries have been shadowing each other near the islets, raising fears that an accidental collision or other unintended incident could develop into a larger clash.
Abe said Japanese troops should discard the notion that all they should do in peace time was train, calling on them to contribute to peace and stability.
"It is your responsibility to resolutely defend the people's lives and property as well as our territory, waters and airspace, and to contribute to the world's peace and stability," Abe said.
"I need you to discard such old notions that all you need to do in a peace time is training, and that defense forces can be a deterrent just by existing."

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Japan ready to be more assertive against China

Japan Prime Minister Abe envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China's power.
By Gerard Baker, George Nishiyama

TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China’s power, seeking to place Tokyo at the helm of countries in the region nervous about Beijing’s military buildup amid fears of an American pullback.
In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Abe also defended his program of economic reforms against growing criticism that the package lacks substance—though he offered few details of new programs, or a timetable, that anxious foreign investors have been seeking.
“I’ve realized that Japan is expected to exert leadership not just on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific,” Mr. Abe said, referring to his meetings with the region’s leaders at a series of summits this month.
In his continuing attempt to juggle his desire to enact economic-stimulus policies with the need to pay down Japan’s massive debt, the prime minister said he was open to reviewing the second stage of a planned increase in the sales tax in 2015 if the economy weakens after the first increase is implemented in the spring.
Less than a year after taking office, Mr. Abe has already emerged as one of Japan’s most influential prime ministers in decades.

He has shaken up the country’s economic policy in an attempt to pull Japan out of a two-decade-long slump, and plotted a more active diplomacy for a country whose global leadership has been crimped by a rapid turnover of weak prime ministers.
In the interview, Mr. Abe made a direct link between his quest for a prosperous Japan, and a country wielding greater influence in the region and the world.
“Japan shrank too much in the last 15 years,” the leader said, explaining how people have become “inward-looking” with students shunning opportunities to study abroad and the public increasingly becoming critical of Tokyo providing aid to other countries.
“By regaining a strong economy, Japan will regain confidence as well, and we’d like to contribute more to making the world a better place.”
Mr. Abe’s views expressed in the interview reflect his broader, long-standing nationalistic vision of a more assertive Japan, one he has argued should break free of constraints imposed on Japan’s military by a postwar pacifist constitution written by the U.S.—and that has also been hampered by economic decline.
Mr. Abe made clear that one important way that Japan would “contribute” would be countering China in Asia. 

“There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won’t be able to emerge peacefully,” Mr. Abe said. 

“So it shouldn’t take that path, and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community.”
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to requests to comment on Mr. Abe’s assertions. 

In the past, the Chinese government has said that Mr. Abe’s government was in danger of leading Japan toward a revival of right-wing militarism.
Mr. Abe’s comments come amid a period of heightened tensions between the two Asian giants, as high-level diplomatic contact has virtually dried up amid a territorial dispute in the East China Sea. 

While the conflict preceded Mr. Abe becoming prime minister in December 2012, Beijing has accused him of aggravating ties with assertive rhetoric defending Japan’s claims and ramping up Coast Guard defense of the Senkaku islands.
His remarks also follow months of active diplomacy that has taken him to summit meetings with heads of state in virtually every country in the region—with the notable exceptions of China and South Korea—which has its own strained ties with Tokyo.
In December, he intends to host in Japan the leaders of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

The event is intended to mark 40 years of Japan’s ties with the bloc that includes countries from Thailand to Indonesia to the Philippines to Myanmar, but also to further elevate Japan’s role as a leader in a region where China has also sought influence.
Mr. Abe’s pursuit of a more expansive role was on full display at a pair of summits in Southeast Asia this month, where he openly took sides in public comments with the Philippines in a South China Sea territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing. 

Mr. Abe’s role in those meetings was amplified by the absence of President Barack Obama, who canceled his participation in the Indonesia and Brunei summits amid budget paralysis back in Washington.

Some leaders expressed concern that Mr. Obama’s absence symbolized a pullback in U.S. participation, and influence, in the region, as domestic political divisions undermine the American leader. 

Mr. Abe declined to answer directly a question about whether he was concerned about a decline in the clout of Japan’s close ally. 

“In the world today, there are many things which only the U.S. can take care of. And in this context, the U.S. takes leadership and we expect the U.S. to do so going forward.”
Mr. Abe has accumulated unusual power for a Japanese leader, steering his party this year to unified control of parliament, riding the popularity of his economic program, dubbed Abenomics. 

A quick dose of stimulus—easy money from the Bank of Japan, and new public-works spending—has given Japan the fastest-growing economy and stock market of the advanced economies this year.
But now Mr. Abe’s economic program is at a turning point. 

The next phase involves debating politically difficult economic reforms and deregulation measures, like making it easier for companies to shed workers, or reducing farmers’ protections. 

He is facing increasing criticism from local media, economists and global investors that these “pro-growth” plans are too vague.
Mr. Abe said the government had submitted related bills to the parliament, stressing that what mattered were the results.
“I am aware of the various criticism over my growth strategy. It may lack the flashy sort of features, but I think what is important is the outcome.”

He said he expected the economy to be dragged down by the tax increase effect from April to June, and the key would be how it recovers afterward.

“I would like to watch carefully how much it can recover in July, August and September. And then I’ll make an appropriate decision.”
But Mr. Abe stopped short of shedding light on whether he would proceed with some key measures seen vital for growth.
On whether to review a 40-year-old system providing income support for rice farmers, long blamed for their low productivity, the prime minister said he would let experts discuss the issue first.
And on slashing the corporate-tax rate, one of the highest among advanced economies, which critics blame for the low foreign investment in Japan, Mr. Abe said his ruling party is the one in charge of setting tax policy.
Asked about whether he would proceed with a plan to raise the sales tax again to 10% in October 2015, Mr. Abe said he would first review the impact of the increase to 8% in April from the current 5%.

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Abe Shunned by China Gets Warmer Welcome Southeast Asia

By Isabel Reynolds and Kyoko Shimodoi

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, gestures during a news conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on Oct. 1, 2013.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, left, prepares to shake hands with Benigno Aquino, Philippines' president, in front of a map of Mindanao island, after reading their joint statements at Malacanang Palace in Manila on July 27, 2013.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, beset by festering ties with China that have barred a bilateral summit since he took office, is overseeing an unprecedented expansion in ties with Southeast Asia as a counterbalance.
Abe, who heads to Indonesia next week for a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, has already visited Southeast Asia three times since taking office in December. 

His administration is building on Japan’s economic links with the region by developing security relationships, offering coast-guard vessels to the Philippines, conducting counter-terrorism exercises with Indonesia and considering the provision of ships for Vietnam.
The broadening relationship comes two generations after Abe’s grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, reopened ties with the region following the turmoil of World War II.

The initiative provides China with an incentive to dial back its aggression in pressing maritime-jurisdiction claims in the region.

“Japan’s power is being eclipsed by China’s and it needs friends and allies beyond just the U.S.,” said Michael Green, who served on the National Security Council and is senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

“The new element with Abe is that he is now prepared to help them on the defense side” in Southeast Asia, rather than focus just on economic ties.

Abe’s efforts to broaden the interpretation of Japan’s constitution -- which bans an official military and has until now been regarded as barring defense of an ally -- raise the possibility of further security links with Southeast Asia. 

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is discussing the adoption of so-called collective defense, though no deadline has been set for a decision.
“If we say we can’t expand our military, we can’t carry out collective self-defense and will only act behind the scenes, then we can’t gain the respect of other Asian countries or have a proper relationship with them,” said LDP lawmaker Hiroshi Imazu, a former deputy defense chief who serves on the parliamentary security committee.
“We caused trouble for them in the war, but now we are saying we will make the international contributions appropriate for a major economy.”

APEC Summit
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders’ meeting in Bali next week gives Abe the chance to meet his counterparts from across Southeast Asia. 

He pledged in July to help provide 10 coast guard vessels to the Philippines, one of the countries at odds with China over waters in the South China Sea rich with oil, gas and fish. 

Japan is discussing a similar arrangement with Vietnam, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters during a visit to Hanoi in mid September.
Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin has said he’d be happy to see Japanese involvement in Philippine military bases and last December Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told the Financial Times the Philippines would “welcome” a rearmed Japan as a “significant balancing factor” in the region.
“I think it is very helpful for the Japanese to be out,” Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters in Seoul on Oct. 1. 

“They are in many ways a great power. They’re a very credible military defense capability. They understand the region through all aspects of economics and culture”, he added.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry held its first-ever seminar on building marine security last month, involving Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, as well as the Philippines and Malaysia.

Containing China
Japanese Marine Self-Defense Forces ships paid their first ever visit to Myanmar this week. 

Indonesia has agreed to increased military cooperation, state news agency Antara reported on Feb. 2, and Japan sent maritime personnel to give the Indonesian Navy a seminar on marine meteorology in February.
The moves by Japan have drawn concern in Beijing. 

Abe’s policies amount to a “plot to contain China,” the official Xinhua news agency said in June.
“It is in our interest to get allies lined up against China,” said Clarita Carlos, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, who has studied Philippine politics for 50 years.

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Code of Conduct
The Philippines, whose defense budget was about $3 billion for the 2012 fiscal year, compared with China’s $166 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, asked the United Nations in January to rule on its dispute with China. 

Beijing took effective control of the Scarborough Shoal, a fertile fishing ground, a year after a standoff between ships from the two countries.
China has agreed to talks on developing a code of conduct for ships operating in the South China Sea, while making advances to Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Premier Li Keqiang called for better ties during a meeting with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Sept. 2, Xinhua reported. 

President Xi Jinping is visiting Indonesia and Malaysia this week while Li plans to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting and then make officials visits to Brunei, Thailand and Vietnam later this month.
Xi today signed a new pact aimed at increasing bilateral trade with Malaysia to $160 billion by 2017, and arranged to exchange army and navy personnel.
Last year the Asean countries failed to release a final communique from their summit for the first time, after a split over the maritime conflicts with China.

‘Same Situation’
In some places Japan is breaking new ground. 

Onodera told reporters on Sept. 17 he was the first non-Vietnamese defense official to see military areas of the Cam Ranh naval base during his visit earlier in the month. 

Vietnam took part in a submarine rescue training exercise in Japan at the end of September, he said. 

Vietnam’s relations with China have at times been strained by the countries’ competing claims to the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands.
“In a sense, Japan and Vietnam are in the same situation, one in the East China Sea and one in the South China Sea,” Onodera said on Sept. 17.
Japan is mired in its own dispute with China after it bought three uninhabited islets coveted by China in the East China Sea last year, triggering violent demonstrations and damaging trade ties between Asia’s two largest economies. 

Since then, Chinese and Japanese patrol boats and aircraft have tailed one another around Japan's Senkaku islands.

Scarborough Shoal
“The strategy is if China were to place pressure on Japan in the East China Sea, Japan can try to defuse it by putting pressure on China in the South China Sea, by backing up Vietnam and the Philippines,” said Dr Lam Peng Er of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, who has written a book about Japan’s ties with the region.
China last month denied starting to build a structure on the Scarborough Shoal. 

The Philippines protested in June what it called the “massive presence of Chinese military and paramilitary ships” around territory it claims. 

In March China fired on a Vietnamese fishing vessel, sparking a protest from the government, and it has used patrol ships to disrupt hydrocarbon surveys by the Philippines and Vietnam.
The rocky relationship with China is reflected in a redirection of Japanese funds. 

Direct investment in Asean countries roughly quadrupled in the first six months of this year to 998.6 billion yen ($10.2 billion), more than twice the 470.1 billion yen that went to China. 

Japan’s big banks such as Mitsubishi UFJ are seeking new markets by investing in Vietnamese counterparts, while Japan agreed in May to give Myanmar 51 billion yen in development loans and about 2 billion yen in grants.

Japan’s Image
Japan’s image in Southeast Asia is more favorable than in China. 

A Pew survey including about 9,400 people in eight Asia-Pacific countries in March and April found Japan was viewed positively by about 80 percent of respondents in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, compared with only 4 percent in China.
Seventy-eight percent of respondents to the survey in China said Japan had not sufficiently apologized for its war actions, compared with 47 percent in the Philippines.
“There’s a lot to be gained for the Japanese in doing this kind of thing,” said Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University in California. 

“I think Abe is very happy to go around Southeast Asia in a very visible way.”

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Japan would not make a concession on its territorial sovereignty

Japan has administered the Senkaku islands for decades and China did not express interest in the islands until recent years after reports that the seabed nearby might contain oil and gas.

By RICK GLADSTONE

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan on Friday rejected any concession in a standoff with China over Japan's Senkaku islands, declining to even acknowledge that the islands are disputed.
At a news conference following his attendance at the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Abe said he was open to dialogue with China about the islands, and that he did not want their disagreement to infect the broader relationship between the two countries.
But Mr. Abe, who wants to strengthen Japan’s military, made clear that for Japan the question of who owned the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea was not open to negotiation.
“Concerning the Senkaku islands, Senkaku is an inherent part of the territory of Japan in light of historical facts and based upon international law, and the islands are under the valid control of Japan,” he said through an interpreter. 

“However the invasion by Chinese government vessels in our territorial waters are continuing, to our regret.”
He also said “Japan would not make a concession on our territorial sovereignty” regarding the islands but that “having said so, we do not intend to escalate this issue any further.”
Mr. Abe appeared to be responding in part to remarks by Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, who said at an appearance last week at the Brookings Institution in Washington that China wanted to resolve the issue peacefully but that Japan had to first acknowledge that ownership of the islands is in dispute.
Japan has administered the islands for decades and China did not express interest in the islands until recent decades after reports that the seabed nearby might contain oil and gas.

Japanese officials have expressed growing concern about China’s sovereignty assertions over the islands. For months, the two countries’ patrol boats have played cat-and-mouse games near the islands. 

A few weeks ago, at least seven Chinese patrol ships entered waters surrounding the islands, and Japanese air force jets were scrambled after a drone aircraft was detected in the region, which Japanese officials have suggested was dispatched by China.
Mr. Abe, who came to power in December, has said he might place government officials on the islands, which could further escalate the confrontation with China. 

While Mr. Abe did not reiterate that possibility on Friday, his chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters in Japan a few weeks ago that it was among the options under consideration.

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