Hostile Maneuvers, Reloaded

In a followup to this post from November of last year,

107 Alerts on Chinese Spy Planes

Japan has scrambled fighter jets 107 times this year to intercept suspected Chinese spy planes, a top general said Thursday, amid growing concern in Tokyo over China’s arms buildup. The 107 alerts in the first three months of 2006 — the most in at least a decade — were a dramatic increase from the previous year, when fighters scrambled only 13 times against Chinese planes, said Gen. Hajime Massaki.

“Chinese activities in areas around Japanese territory have reached unprecedented levels,” the chairman of the Joint Staff Committee told reporters. “We believe these planes to be engaging in information-gathering activity, and behind the trend is the rapid modernization of China’s military,” the general said.

Japan’s policymakers are super-sensitive right now to China’s military buildup. Beijing has a 2.5-million member military, and has increased its military spending by double-digits almost every year since the early 1990s (notably above the growth of its GDP). There are other factors that make the figure higher than it actually is—China does not include R&D in its defense spending, 40% of Japan’s budget goes to salaries compared to 20% for China, not to mention the rations. The BBC has a summary on the topic here. This is the main reason Japan is going out of its way to join up with the American Missile Defense Plan, join them in the reorganization of the military, and try its hard—beef imports notwithstanding—to keep great relations with the US.