Japanese Assessments of China’s Military Development

Abstract

Introduction It is a fact that China has increasingly modernized its military power. This, in conjunction with China's rising economic power, is new to history. It is hence natural that Japan, both as a regional great power and as an ally of the United States, heeds attention to this new reality. The objective here is to review from various perspectives how Japan assesses the modernization of the Chinese military. The commentary takes account of public opinion polls, official interpretation by the government, and experts' opinions. It should be noted that in Japan, is something of a social taboo openly to discuss military- or security-related issues. When comes to evaluating how China might react in certain circumstances, the Japanese government has had reservations about taking an official position on China's military might. Even scholarly research in Japan on the Chinese military is not welcome. Most experts on the China military are in fact historians. No community of specialists exists in Japan where government intelligence officers and scholars get involved and build ties. This commentary thus is among the first steps toward bringing together Japanese assessments of and reactions to China's military development. Public Opinion on China The reality is that no public opinion polls have been conducted specifically with respect to China's military. Instead, the Cabinet Office under the prime minister takes polls on diplomacy, which include citizens' affinity toward major countries. Historically, the Japanese tend to close to as polls typically showed more than 60 percent expressing that view. But the figure plummeted with the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, and took a further descending path after 2003. At the end of 2005, the rating of those having a favorable view toward China dropped to only 32.4 percent, while those not having a favorable view reached 63.4 percent (see Figure 1). Although tension over bilateral relations has relaxed since the resignation of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro in 2006, is clear that the overall impression of China among average Japanese has sunk dramatically. One poll did specifically ask about a from According to the joint opinion polls conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Gallop in November 2005, 73 percent of the respondents said that their government's relationship with China is bad, another 72 percent said they do not trust China, and still another 76 percent indicated that they feel threatened by China. By contrast, 62 percent of the respondents said they think of the Japan-U.S. alliance as useful.1 Even more revealing was a 2006 Yomiuri Shimbun opinion poll (see Table 1) in which 44 percent of those polled saw China as a security to Japan. Only North Korea was rated as a greater threat. People were also asked to name the country that, economically and politically, you think will become the most influential in Asia. An overwhelming 56.7 percent of the Japanese respondents chose The United States ranked next. Opinion polls such as the one by the Yomiuri Shimbun/Gallop have suggested that a difficult Japanese-Chinese relationship, accompanied by China's economic and military growth, added to the view of China as a threat. Here the term threat is probably synonymous with a concern or fear. Yet this view is not entirely groundless; reflects such realities as China's economic development, military modernization without a sign of democratization, and moves insensitive toward Japan. Japanese politicians, like average citizens, no longer hesitate to express their own harsh opinions of Some even take a very strong position of opposing certain Chinese actions. For instance, Maehara Seiji, then head of the Democratic Party of Japan, said in a December 2005 talk at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies that it is hard to deny that China has grown at a rapid pace not only economically but militarily as well. …