China on Monday lashed out at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for describing China as a threat to regional security, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang, told a daily media briefing in Beijing. He also said that if Japan insisted on seeing China as a rival, both the choice and calculation, would be wrong.

China-Japan relations have touched new lows because of the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Japan raised tensions in September 2012 when local Tokyo government tried to "nationalize" the islands. The conflict gradually intensified through Japan's continuous provocations.

Chinese authorities have been restrained in the face of Japan's provocations. But Japan's politicians obviously use provocations as an internal political weapon with some competing against others in a race to condemn China.

Earlier this year, Japan's Finance Minister Taro Aso said that Japan should follow the "Nazi example of how to change the country's constitution." He also suggested that Japanese politicians pay visits to the Yasukuni Shrine quietly to avoid controversy, which invoked ire from China and other Asian countries.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Prime Minister Abe said he envisioned his country playing a more assertive role in Asia to counter China's rise. For a few years now, Japan has been stoking the "China threat" theory that was formed alongside China's growing strength. But it is Japan that poses threats to China and its Asian neighbors.

The threats emerge not only from Japan's denial of history and the war crimes it had committed, but also from right-wing forces within Japan that seek to amend its peace-time constitution and break the post-war Asian and world order. It is now engaged in territorial disputes with nearly all its neighbors.

Amid its progress, China however, does not intend to make enemies of any country because that will hamper China's role as a responsible world player and cloud its long-term strategic goals. As a small and isolated island country, Japan has cultivated a narrow-minded and self-centered attitude that obstructs the country from integrating with the international community and seeks an environment that best suits its national interests alone.

Although in recent years, China has been at the center of a regional power shift but has kept a low profile to avoid any uneasiness. But if Japan continues with its hard-line policy toward China, it will squeeze its own strategic space further.