A big military exercise in the South China Sea is getting Beijing’s back up. It’s part of a bigger shift in regional security.
Choppy waters
When thousands of troops from the United States and the Philippines began their annual Balikatan military exercise in the South China Sea this week, Beijing’s response was more forceful than the ritual complaints it has made every year since the drills began in 1991. China sent a naval destroyer group to the western Pacific close to Japan’s southwestern Amami Oshima island to test “operational capabilities” while warning against undermining trust in the region.
“What the Asia-Pacific region most needs is peace and tranquillity, and what it least needs is the introduction of external forces to create division and confrontation,” said foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun.
“We would like to remind the relevant countries that persisting in tying themselves together on security will only lead to setting themselves on fire and backfiring.”
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What has riled Beijing is that Japan has joined the Balikatan drills, along with Australia and New Zealand, and will take part in live-fire exercises. When Japanese forces attended in the past, it was generally as observers and in noncombat roles related to humanitarian assistance and disaster response.
This week, 1,400 Japanese troops will take part and they will fire Type 88 ground-to-surface missiles that can sink a ship 40 nautical miles away. This week’s exercise follows a complaint from Beijing last week that Tokyo was “stirring up trouble” when a Japanese destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait.
Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have been in the deep freeze since last year when Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said that an attack on Taiwan could represent an existential threat to her country that would justify deploying Japanese armed forces. Japan’s postwar constitution sets strict limits on the use of what are still called the Self-Defence Forces.
Recent weeks have seen a high-level Nato visit to Tokyo and a deepening of defence ties between Japan and Australia, with Canberra signing a deal to buy 11 Japanese frigates. Both countries have increased their defence budgets dramatically with a view to building up their military capabilities in the region.
China characterises these developments as evidence that Japan is seeking to throw off the postwar constraints designed to prevent a resurgence of militarism. Chinese commentators this week described Japan’s weapons exports as a lever to revive the military-industrial complex that sustained its war effort more than 80 years ago.
One factor driving the surge in defence spending in Japan and Australia is a realisation on the part of Washington’s Asian allies that they can no longer depend on the American security umbrella. Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing next month reflects the fact that both the US and China are interested in reducing military tensions and boosting economic relations.
For Japan and Australia, along with South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, a reduction of tension between the US and China should be welcome. But it brings its own anxieties too.
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