Japan yesterday adopted a new five-year ocean policy that calls for stronger maritime security, including bolstering its coast guard’s capability and cooperation with the military amid China’s increasing assertiveness in regional seas.
The new Basic Plan on Ocean Policy, adopted by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet, also says that Japan must accelerate the development of autonomous underwater vehicles and remotely operated robots to bolster its surveillance capability.
It cited a list of threats: The Chinese Coast Guard’s repeated intrusions into Japanese territorial waters, growing unauthorized maritime activity by “foreign survey boats” inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, increasing joint military exercises by China and Russia, and North Korea’s repeated missile launches.
Photo: AP
“The situation in the ocean around Japan is increasingly tense,” Kishida said at a policy meeting yesterday. “It’s time for us to unite our wisdom among the industry, academia and government for ocean policy reform.”
He also noted the need to better use maritime resources to achieve carbon neutrality.
The new ocean policy is in line with Japan’s new national security strategy, which Kishida’s government adopted in December last year in a major break from its self-defense-only principle that the country has maintained under a pacifist constitution since World War II.
The new strategy highlights bolstering Japan’s military power with strike capability and doubling its defense budget within five years. The strategy also calls for closer cooperation between the military and the coast guard in any emergency over Taiwan or other possible conflicts.
The plan also said the capability of Japan’s coast guard, which has been on the front line of border disputes, needs to be improved. It frequently confronts Chinese Coast Guard vessels approaching disputed Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea, North Korean poachers and suspected spy boats, and Russian Coast Guard vessels near disputed northern islands.
The Japanese Coast Guard is used for civilian policing at sea and not military combat, and the new plans calling for closer cooperation with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have raised concerns about its role and safety in a possible conflict.
The ocean plan also says Japan needs to be more aggressive about undersea surveys and using undersea resources for energy, calling for greater use of the exclusive economic zone outside of territorial waters to build offshore wind-power generators.
Japan has repeatedly protested over Chinese research ships entering its waters or the exclusive economic zone close to its boundary for apparent surveys of undersea deposits and other marine resources.
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