Worried over China, Japan adopts new defence policy

TOKYO - Japan Friday adopted a more proactive defence policy as concerns grow in Tokyo over terrorist threats, North Korean aggression and China’s military rise.

The National Defence Programme Guidelines, the first update since 2004, allow for more flexible responses to threats and a beefing-up of security around Japan’s remote and often disputed islands, the Kyodo News agency reported.

According to the outline, China’s military rise and its increasing naval activities near Japanese islands in the South China Sea was a “matter of concern for the region and the international community”.

The change was “befitting” the challenging security environment Japan currently faces, Defence Minister Thoshimi Kitazawa was quoted as saying. The new policy could deal with the complex security environment, he added.

By introducing a concept of “dynamic defence capability”, the new policy marks a shift from the old one of maintaining only a minimum necessary defence capability to avoid becoming a destabilising factor in the region.

Japan also plans to increase defence cooperation with democratic neighbours, such as South Korea, Australia and India, as well as its main ally, the US.

The outline also contains language that could facilitate the lifting of Japan’s weapons export ban, a politically sensitive issue because of the country’s pacifist constitution.

It was the first defence policy update for a government led by the Democratic Party of Japan, which unseated the Liberal Democratic party in 2009 after half a century of almost uninterrupted rule.

The guidelines assess defence policy for a 10-year period starting with the 2011 fiscal year.

Defence spending for the next five years was set at 23.49 trillion yen (about $279 billion), down 750 billion yen from the 2005-2009 period, due to Japan’s strained public finances.