Japan moves to double military spending with cautious eye on China

Japan on Friday announced a new national security strategy that will double the amount earmarked for the country’s military defense, breaking with decadeslong precedence on spending restraints as it seeks to strengthen its military capabilities to counter China’s rising power.

The new plan, approved by the Cabinet on Friday, reflects the geopolitical shifts that have swept the region since the previous version was released nearly a decade ago. In 2013, the document described China and Russia as strategic partners. Now it deems Beijing’s rise as the “greatest strategic challenge” to international order and toughens its assessment of a more belligerent Russia.

Speaking to reporters at a press briefing after the Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that Japan had reached a “turning point” it its history that necessitated the buildup.

“In Japan’s neighboring countries and regions, there is more obvious shift toward attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by might,” he said, noting that Japan would take a wide range of measures, from military to diplomatic, to respond to the change.

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The new strategy represents the latest step in Japan’s yearslong path toward building a more muscular military and reducing its dependence on US forces. After decades of resistance to the idea, recent polls show that more than half of the country now supports at least some military buildup, amid China’s growing aggression toward Taiwan and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

That has allowed Kishida to push forward defense measures that would have been viewed as extreme even recently in officially pacifist Japan, including the acquisition of missiles that could be used to target bases in enemy territory in response to an attack.

“One year ago, I couldn’t imagine that the Japanese people would support this kind of security initiative,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a professor of international relations at Meikai University and a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.

When Japan released its first national security strategy nine years ago, it identified North Korea and its nuclear program as the country’s greatest security concern. While the North’s flurry of missile tests this year and its expanding nuclear arsenal show that it has not receded as a threat, the security strategy now labels China the biggest challenge.