Japan defense white paper targets ADIZ, exaggerates 'China threat': expert

Kyodo News agency Wednesday released a draft overview of Japan's upcoming white paper on defense, which blamed China's declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea as a provocation and said the ADIZ could trigger an unwanted clash.

Analysts slammed an upcoming Japanese defense paper as exaggerating threats from China and said such rhetoric was designed to serve Japan's political agenda as Japan worked hard to ease control of its powerful military.

"The paper targets the ADIZ to exaggerate China threat. The rhetoric has been repeatedly used as an excuse to amend Japan's pacifist Constitution and hide Japan's ambition to 'walk the path of militarism,'" Luo Yuan, vice-president of the China Strategic Culture Promotion Association, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The white paper, which is expected to be approved by the Cabinet in early August, will state China has "unjustifiably infringed on the principle of freedom of flight in airspace above the high seas," Kyodo News reported.

"Judging from Japan's white papers over the past years, the country has become reckless toward the dangerous tendencies of what might become of Sino-Japanese relations. Japan is trying to cast more influence on international opinion," Luo said.

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 1 adopted a resolution to reinterpret Japan's Peace Constitution, which will allow the country to defend allies under armed attack in collective self-defense. The move was seen as a shift in Japan's pacifist stance.

The Kyodo News said the white paper indicated that North Korea will step up its military provocations as a vital deterrent to the US.