Japan should stop playing with fire

On June 11, the Japanese Ministry of Defense speculated that Chinese jet fighters drew "unusually close" to its surveillance aircraft. Japan even protested to China as if the claims were true.

In response, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense published a video that shows how two Japanese surveillance aircraft intruded into the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone, and took actions endangering a Chinese surveillance plane. Finding itself in an untenable position, Japan demanded China delete the video.

This is not the first time that Japan has played the trick of a thief crying, "Stop thief". On May 24, the Japanese government claimed that Chinese military planes approached their surveillance aircraft, but it was soon revealed that Japanese military planes intruded into the airspace of the joint military exercises being conducted by China and Russia first. On June 14, Japan claimed that a Chinese frigate "could have" directed fire-control radar at the Japanese destroyer Sawagiri on May 29, but at the same time admitted there is "no conclusive evidence".

Actually, all these incidents have been orchestrated by the Abe administration of Japan, with the purpose of putting their guilt on China.

However, Japan is rather unprofessional in fabricating such stories. It is common knowledge that most navies in the world have ships equipped with all kinds of photoelectric directors for controlling the small caliber guns and short-range missiles they carry. It was simply unnecessary for the radar to be employed if the Chinese naval vessel really intended to attack the Japanese warship at such short range. By accusing the Chinese vessel of doing so, Japan has shot itself in the foot.

Besides, the Japanese government has never revealed exactly where these claimed incidents happened. That is because they know clearly they all happened in China's near sea, or where Chinese planes and warships are on regular patrols and training missions.

By making these false accusations, Japan is seeking to create a "China threat". By doing so, it aims to not only throw its own guilt on China for the tensions between them, it is also rallying public opinion support for the ongoing move to change Article 9 of Japan's Constitution and remove the ban on exercising collective defense rights.

An obvious fact is that these incidents, each of them with "an Abe Production" on its copyright page, come together with Abe's plan of remilitarizing Japan. Meeting opposition from both home and abroad, Abe and the right wing of Japan need a story of external threat.