Japan foolish to tie itself to time bomb

This is an editorial from China Daily.

In a telephone call with his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang urged Japan to act prudently on historical issues, on the Taiwan question and in the field of military security.

That came after James Bierman, the top US Marine general in Japan, said that the Pentagon was "setting the theatre", military jargon for war, in the Asia-Pacific. Washington is now encouraging Japan to step to the front.

In recent days, there have been media reports about the US supplying Japan with weapons, including medium-range missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and long-range hypersonic weapons, to be sited in some Japanese islands close to China's Taiwan.

Such reports are intended to bring the Japanese public around to the idea and are accompanied by scaremongering about the potential threat from China.

The US and Japan are constantly hyping up the China threat theory as justification for such a move and for continuously expanding their security cooperation under the pretext that they are making preparations to counter any attempt by the Chinese mainland to "invade" Taiwan.

Yet, if deployed, it can be predicted that other countries in the region besides China will respond, as these types of weapons could cover not only the island of Taiwan but also the East China Sea, posing a threat to other countries in East Asia as well.

Therefore, should the US and Japan deploy such missiles, both countries must shoulder the blame for stoking tensions in the region and triggering a regional arms race.

Due to its rightist-leaning politicians' ambition to revive Japan as a regional military power and its maritime skirmishes with China over the East China Sea, Japan has been more than willing to jump on the US bandwagon of containing China and is voluntarily serving as point man for the US' "Indo-Pacific" strategy.

Tokyo should know that doing so will bring Japan more harm than gains. It does not need a military expert to point out that Japan's enthusiasm to deploy sophisticated US weaponry on its soil is simply setting up bull's-eyes should the war scenario they are so fervidly depicting actually materialize.

The US has shown in Europe that it is quite willing to push its allies into the line of fire.

By helping Japan beef up its military might, Washington is playing with fire too as its reckless move will only embolden Japan in its push for militarization.