China reacted harshly to the announcement regarding the opening of a NATO representative office in Japan, where they assure that they do not plan to join the North Atlantic Alliance.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Japan has no plans to become a NATO member, but confirmed plans to open a NATO representative office in the country. Kishid’s comments followed an announcement by Japan’s ambassador to the United States, who said in early May that NATO plans to open an office in Tokyo to facilitate consultations in the region.
Beijing announced that the Asia-Pacific region does not welcome the opening of a NATO mission in Japan, nor does it welcome military confrontations. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that Japan should be especially careful on the issue of military security in view of its “history of aggression“.
During his visit to Japan in February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that no NATO partner country “as close and as capable as Japan“.
Stoltenberg also praised Japan’s plan to increase defense spending, which he said reflected its determination to become more security-conscious in an unstable world.
“I am pleased that Japan is planning a military budget that will meet the NATO benchmark of two percent of GDP for defense,” he said in a speech at Keio University in Tokyo in February.
For decades, Japan has limited its military spending to about one percent of GDP, but Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government late last year approved a new security strategy that includes plans to increase defense spending to two percent of GDP by fiscal year 2027.
The office in Tokyo, which is expected to open next week, will be the first NATO mission in Asia, where tensions between the United States and China are rising over the issue of Taiwan and China’s territorial claims in the South China and East China Seas.
On Wednesday, China said it had deployed three navigation transmitters at three locations in the South China Sea.
Source: Rtvslo
