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By Micah McCartney
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China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a strongly worded protest over Japan’s plan to deploy a military surveillance radar unit to a remote island to monitor Chinese navy vessels entering the Pacific.
Spokesperson Guo Jiakun compared Japan's "military buildup" on the island of Kitadaito—apparently a response to China's ambitions regarding Taiwan—to Tokyo's expansionism in the lead-up to World War II.
The planned unit will boost monitoring of Chinese carriers and aircraft operating near Japan's southwestern islands.
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Why It Matters
Japan’s government is concerned about China’s military expansion and movements, with the People’s Liberation Army increasingly operating farther afield and closer to Japanese territory.
News of the radar plan, revealed earlier this week by Kyodo News amid tensions between Beijing and Tokyo, comes in the wake of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments last month suggesting a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be grounds for a U.S.-Japanese intervention.
Newsweek reached out to the Japan Self-Defense Forces via email with a request for comment outside of office hours.
What To Know
According to the Kyodo report, the Japanese Defense Ministry signed a land lease agreement for 26 acres in Kitadaito, a small village of several hundred on the easternmost island of Okinawa Prefecture.
The plan includes construction of facilities for installation of radar and associated infrastructure, and around 30 Air Self-Defense Force personnel are expected to be stationed there, the news agency said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
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The deployment is expected to increase surveillance of Chinese aircraft carriers and warplanes entering the Miyako Strait—a strategic waterway between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island that links the East China Sea with the open Pacific.
The first of China’s three aircraft carriers, CNS Liaoning, and its escorts passed through the international waters of the strait last week in a week‑long deployment monitored by Japan’s defense authorities.
"It needs to be stressed that countries enjoy freedom of navigation and overflight in relevant waters and airspace in accordance with international law," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters Thursday.
Guo noted that Japan is advancing plans to strengthen its military posture on its southwestern islands, including a plan to deploy Type 03 Chu‑SAM surface‑to‑air missiles on Okinawa Prefecture’s Yonaguni Island, situated approximately 70 miles from Taiwan.
"This time, it went even further by deploying a radar unit and troops to secretly monitor its neighbor," the official said. "Given the erroneous and dangerous remarks made by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Taiwan, we must question: Is the Japanese side making trouble and provocations at its neighbor’s doorstep to find a pretext for its military buildup and missions overseas?"
He then alluded to Imperial Japan’s military adventurism of the 1930s and 1940s and urged Tokyo to "learn from history."
In her controversial November 7 remarks, Takaichi intimated that a military blockade would present a "survival‑threatening situation" for Japan, a rare justification for military action under the country’s pacifist postwar constitution.
China claims Taiwan as its territory, though the Communist Party‑led authorities in Beijing have never governed there. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged unification is inevitable and has not ruled out use of force to achieve it.
What People Are Saying
Mitsunori Onizuka, mayor of Kitadaito, told Kyodo: ‘Against the backdrop of China and Russia conducting joint exercises in the Pacific, the deployment will help create a deterrent effect.’"
What Happens Next
Construction of the new facility on Kitadaito is expected to begin after the New Year, per Kyodo.
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