By Shan Shuang
As the Japanese Ministry of Defense hyped the so-called issue of "radar illumination" by Chinese aircraft, the solid evidence released by the Chinese side once again exposed Japan's lies. China released the audio recordings of communications between the two naval vessels on December 9. The recordings show that, on the afternoon of the incident, the China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier formation instructed the PLAN Type-055 guided-missile destroyer Nanchang (Hull 101) to issue two clear and explicit notifications to the Japanese side. The Japanese destroyer Teruzuki confirmed receipt of the notifications twice via radio. These conclusive records with two communications and two acknowledgments render Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi's earlier claim that Japan did not receive prior notification from China a blatant self-deceiving lie. They also fully expose to the international community Japan's habitual tactic of "a thief crying 'stop thief'".
This farce, triggered by Japan's provocation and groundless accusations, constitutes yet another reckless act by the Takaichi Cabinet that undermines the political foundation of China-Japan relations and violates the basic norms of international justice and peace. What is even more alarming is that Japan's right-wing forces have repeatedly attempted to fabricate confrontation as a pretext for advancing military expansion. Preventing the malignant resurgence of Japanese militarism in contemporary times is a shared responsibility of regional countries and an essential requirement for safeguarding the post-war international order and peace.
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi's depiction of China's radar operation as a so-called dangerous act follows the same logic of provoking first and accusing later, a tactic reminiscent of the Liutiaohu Incident (also known as the September 18 Incident) orchestrated by the Japanese Kwantung Army in 1931. When Japanese F-15 fighter jets intruded without authorization into the Chinese exercise area east of the Miyako Strait, the Japanese Ministry of Defense chose to ignore its own prior provocation. Instead, it repeatedly broadcast so-called radar illumination footage through NHK.
The common feature of such tactics is the deliberate use of information asymmetry to fabricate an "external threat," thereby creating justification for further military buildup and armament expansion.
On one hand, Japan continues to provoke on questions concerning the Diaoyu Dao and the Taiwan Strait, driving its defense budget for 2025 to surge to 11 trillion yen and pushing attempts to revise the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in order to pave the way for arms exports. On the other hand, it repeatedly underscores so-called pacifism, highlights its own "wartime trauma," and stokes perceptions of "external threats" from other countries. Canadian historian David Wright has summarized the issue with notable accuracy that the root cause of Japan's political rightward shift lies in its lack of sincere regret about its wartime responsibilities.
While Japan presents itself on the international stage under the banner of the pacifist constitution to construct a "victim" image, it simultaneously engages in systematic historical revisionism at home, diluting or even removing content related to the Nanjing Massacre from textbooks. It publicly commemorates the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings to elicit sympathy, yet avoids any substantive acknowledgment of crimes against humanity, such as the comfort women system and the Unit 731 human experimentation program, and even tolerates certain extremists' visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to glorify Class-A war criminals.
To this day, although Japan's right-wing forces strive to conceal their actions behind the rhetoric of "pacifism," their true intentions are invariably exposed whenever they provoke external tensions. A Japan that has yet to undertake genuine introspection over its historical crimes, whose defense budget continues to surge year after year, whose security legislation has been forcibly enacted, whose restrictions on weapons exports have become largely nominal, and whose words and deeds betray a widening internal contradiction, is a country that all justice-minded nations must treat with vigilance.
If Japan's right-wing circles remain fixated on the fabricated narrative of a so-called survival-threatening situation driven by external threats, and persist in provocations on issues concerning China's core interests, they will ultimately face yet another judgment delivered in the name of justice.
(The author is a research fellow of the Chinese PLA National Defense University.)
Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.