Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi Photo:VCG

Japan magnifies the threat of China and Russia and binds the two countries together by portraying China and Russia as a so-called military alliance, which is a very important excuse for Japan's own military expansion, Chinese experts warned on Sunday after Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi accused China of "intensifying its unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China seas" and said China and Russia are "strengthening military collaboration."

Speaking at a meeting of European and Indo-Pacific foreign ministers in Sweden on Saturday, Hayashi said Russia's war in Ukraine had "shaken the very foundation of the international order" and must face a united response by the international community, according to the Associated Press.

Targeting China, Hayashi accused Beijing of "continuing and intensifying its unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China seas by force and increasing its military activities around the island of Taiwan."

"In addition, China and Russia are strengthening their military collaboration, including joint flights of their bombers and joint naval exercises in the vicinity of Japan," Hayashi said on Saturday.

Experts said that when it comes to regional security issues such as the Ukraine crisis, Japan always puts the spearhead of its attack on countries such as China and Russia. By creating the impression that China and Russia are united, Japan magnifies the threat of China and Russia and binds the two countries together because portraying China and Russia as a so-called military alliance is a very important excuse for Japan's own military expansion, Wang Guangtao, an associate research fellow at the Center for Japanese Studies of the Shanghai-based Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

In December 2022, the Kishida administration approved three new strategic documents: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Program, stating that Japan should have "counterattack capabilities," that is, "the ability to attack enemy bases." Based on these three documents, Japan will greatly strengthen its forces and plans to increase defense spending from 2023 to 2027 to 1.6 times that of 2019 to 2023. 

This means that Japan, a country once launched aggressive wars of militarism against other countries, has completely deviated from its constitutional peace concept. In these documents, the frequency of mentioning China and Russia has increased significantly, Wang said.

By forcibly kidnapping and binding China and Russia together, Japan wants to create a distorted image that China and Russia are destroying the order of Asia, the Indo-Pacific region, or even the global order, experts warned.

Besides, specifically mentioning the Taiwan question, Hayashi is to gradually shift the question from an internal affair of China to a regional or even larger international issue, said Da Zhigang, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences on Sunday.

Japan is using European affairs to "constrain" China and further unite forces like NATO to intervene in Asian affairs, Da said. "Japan is the biggest factor threatening the regional security," Da said.