The Japanese public now sees China\u2019s growing military power as the country\u2019s leading security concern, overtaking the threat posed by North Korean nuclear missiles, a government survey released on Friday showed.<\/p>\n
In the survey, 68% of 1,534 respondents pointed to advances in \u200bChinese military technology and its activities close to \u200dJapan and in \u2060the South China Sea as their \u200dtop security worry, up from 61% when the poll was last conducted three years ago.<\/p>\n
The five-week survey began on Nov. 6, a day before Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sparked the worst diplomatic \u200ddispute with Beijing in more than a decade by saying that Tokyo could deploy its forces if a Chinese attack on democratically \u200cgoverned Taiwan was deemed an existential threat to Japan.<\/p>\n
China has demanded she retract her remarks, \u200bwarned its citizens against \u200ctraveling to Japan and threatened to \u200crestrict exports of rare earths, a key component in \u200bindustrial supply chains. \u200cBeijing has also conducted military drills near Japan and, last week, held war games around Taiwan involving missiles, warships and aircraft.<\/p>\n
The survey also showed support for Japan\u2019s military at an all-time high, with 94% of respondents saying they had a favorable opinion of the Self-Defense Forces.<\/p>\n
The poll comes as Takaichi\u2019s government prepares to formulate its next defense plan, which is expected \u200dto \u200dfurther increase funding.<\/p>\n
Under its U.S.-drafted post-war Constitution, Japan renounced the right to wage war, but it remains \u200done of the world\u2019s biggest military spenders.<\/p>\n
It is doubling defense outlays to 2% of gross domestic product to deter China from using force to pursue its territorial ambitions in East \u200cAsia. Beijing has accused Japan of stoking regional tensions with its military plans and has warned Tokyo of a \u201ccrushing\u201d defeat if it were to intervene over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Japanese public now sees China\u2019s growing military power as the country\u2019s leading security concern, overtaking the threat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[12,462,177,179,180,178,358,2787,488],"class_list":["post-50670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-china","tag-china-japan-relations","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-surveys","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}