Japan Moves Closer on Plan to Expand Military amid Warnings from China

Beijing urges Tokyo to ‘refrain from crippling regional peace and stability’ after Japanese bills approved in lower house

China has warned Japan against “crippling regional peace and security” after the lower house of parliament in Tokyo passed bills to allow Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since the second world war.

Japanese soldiers. The two bills would permit Tokyo to 

deploy soldiers abroad in UN peacekeeping missions 

and for collective defence in the face of a direct threat 

to Japanese security. 

Photograph: Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images

The two bills were passed despite widespread popular opposition and questions over their constitutionality. Opposition parties staged a walkout in protest before the vote, while tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated outside parliament. But, with the governing Liberal Democratic party (LDP) controlling two-thirds of the seats, the outcome was never in doubt.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) talks with minister 

in charge of reviving local economies Shigeru Ishiba during 

the plenary session of the parliament in Tokyo July 16, 2015.

The legislation, part of a long-running bid by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to reinterpret Japan’s US-authored pacifist postwar constitution, now has to go before the upper house, where the LDP and its allies are also in the majority. It will have 60 days to vote but if the upper house rejects the bills, it can be overridden by the lower house. Opposition parties, deeply attached to the doctrine of collective self-defence, are planning legal challenges.

If the new bills survive, they would permit the Japanese government to deploy soldiers abroad in UN peacekeeping missions and for collective defence, for example in alliance with the US and Australia, in the face of a direct threat to Japanese security.

“It is fully justified to ask if Japan is going to give up its exclusively defence-oriented policy,” China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement. “We solemnly urge the Japanese side to … refrain from jeopardising China’s sovereignty and security interests or crippling regional peace and stability.”

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