Japan careering along dangerous road without due care and attention

The Japanese Ministry of Defense announced its application for the defense budget for fiscal year 2025 on Friday, a record high of 8.54 trillion yen ($59.15 billion). If the application is approved, it will be the 13th consecutive year that Japan has increased its defense budget.

In recent years, Japan has been running wildly on the dangerous road of expanding its military, which deserves high vigilance from neighboring countries and the international community.

Against the backdrop of overall deflation in Japan's economy, sluggish investment and consumption, the rapid growth of military spending has greatly increased the debt burden of the Japanese government, which is one of the reasons why Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he would stand down at the end of this term.

The weapons and military facilities developed by Japan now include long-range missiles, anti-ship missiles and satellite networks for tracking warships and missiles. The expensive catalogue far exceeds the needs of self-defense and shows obvious offensive intent. It has begun to conduct space operations with great fanfare.

The deployment and actions of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are increasingly based on the role assigned to them by the United States, that is, as a proxy able to counter Beijing in the East China Sea, the South China Sea and over the Taiwan question.

All regional countries should know that Japan, which has never thoroughly reflected on the lessons of its recent history, now actively provides a springboard for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization led by the US to leap into action in the Asia-Pacific.

The painful lessons of the Ukraine crisis have not awakened Japan to the dangers of inviting the wolves into the Asian house.

At the same time, Japan turns a blind eye to the role of the US as an instigator of the Korean Peninsula issue, and intentionally uses the "threat" from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as an excuse to justify its rearmament.

At the end of 2022, the Japanese Cabinet passed three security policy documents, clarifying that Japan's total defense expenditure will increase to 43 trillion yen from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2027.

Japan's approach is to continuously hollow out its "peace Constitution" and try its best to get rid of the restrictions it imposes so it can discard the exclusively defensive policy.

Japan should truly face up to and deeply reflect on its history of aggression, and win the trust of its Asian neighbors with practical actions. People in the Asia-Pacific region will never allow Japan to use the US' geopolitical game to disguise the rise of its militarism.