The military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of China’s foundation, held in Beijing last October, deeply impressed the message, “China aims to become a military superpower and its ultimate goal is to achieve hegemony” on the international community. I was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the ultramodern weapons of the Chinese army, navy, and air force, which appeared one after another, even though I was just watching them on TV. Especially remarkable in the parade were the 108 ballistic missiles that were shown; the amount had increased three times as much as had been in the parade ten years ago. Not only the numbers, but the striking power of the missiles had also dramatically increased, such as the “Dong Feng 31A,” long-range missiles which enable a nuclear attack anywhere on the continent of the United States, and the “Dong Feng 21C,” mid-range missiles, which have the potential to break through the MD system co-developed by Japan and the U.S., and which are pointed at China’s neighboring countries including Japan and India.
Land vehicles shown included the latest heavy tank “Type 99” and amphibious combat vehicles for landing and beachhead assaults from the sea. These might be presumably for the invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese air force first displayed its domestically product aircraft the “Jian-11”, which is modeled after the Russian jet fighter the “Sukhoi Su-27”, which flew in formation followed by airborne early warning aircraft and bomber aircraft. I was awed by the Chinese male and female soldiers marching, like we often see the North Koreans do on TV, but they were splendid and excelled beyond compare, but at the same time, I was chilled to the bone by this garish display of military might in an age when the world is striving towards nuclear disarmament. No matter how much Hu Jintao and the ruling party speak of peace and try to dilute China’s threat to the world, China’s threat is very real and can not be “diluted”.
During the military parade, in addition to the missiles, heavy tanks, and fighters, a variety of modern weapons were displayed. The Chinese military aspires after the latest arms used in the Gulf War and the Iraq war by the U.S. and European countries, and is making efforts to improve its firepower and mobility by introducing state-of-the-art technology, computer networking, and tactical satellites for precision guidance and tracking of weapons. China’s defense expenditure has continued to be a double-digit percentage of GDP for 21 years and their military expenditure is the 2nd highest in the world after the U.S. of 15 trillion yen, three times higher than that of Japan. The parade was a showcase to show off their latest weapons developed and produced in China – to the world.
Rather than hidden ambition, the ambition of China, whose armor we can glimpse hiding under their robe, is to dominate the western Pacific area in Asia and advance their defense line into the Pacific far from Mainland China. If that happens, the U.S. will retreat to Guam and Hawaii and Japan will be absorbed into the Chinese sphere of influence. It’s not a groundless fear. In fact, one of the upper echelon of the Chinese navy allegedly proposed the following to Mr. Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, “Let’s divide the Pacific into two parts; the U.S. governed east side and the China governed west side.” in 2009.
Commander Keating testifying before the Armed Service Committee of the U.S. Senate warned that, “It can be regarded as a joke, but we those words contain the essence of their long term strategy.” With China deploying its latest long range missiles covering the whole land of the U.S. and middle range missiles pointed at every neighboring country, the U.S. trying to keep the status quo by holding the defense line between Japan and China is already pointless. Therefore, it’s reasonable for the U.S. to reduce their military presence and expenditure, abandon Japan whom they can not rely on, retract the line of defense closer to America, isn’t it? At the same time, China will say, “Don’t worry. You have nothing to fear from us. We will stay with our nonaggressive defense policy to the very end.” I can sense this kind of suggestion in those words.

　On April 23rd a half year before the military parade on National Day, China held their first International Fleet Review off the coast of Qingdao where China showed 25 ships including the latest atomic submarines and surface ships and 21 ships from 14 countries including the U.S. and Russia joined this review but the fleet of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force were not invited. Although President Hu Jintao (chairman of the Military Committee) eagerly tried to negate the China Threat Theory with his words “China adheres to a defensive doctrine, will never advocate hegemony, will not join any arms race, and therefore cannot be a military threat to any country.” We cannot take his word for that. China emphasized that, “However strong our national power and military power becomes, we will not change our defense-only policy.” Hu’s ruling circle insisted that they showed their basic principle of diplomacy, “Aim to maintain peace and build a flourishing and harmonious world again.” However, it’s their common maneuver to seemingly say one thing and think and do another.
China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television instructed the film industry to downsize the number of theaters running the worldwide smash hit Hollywood movie “Avatar” which broke the worldwide box-office revenue record set by “Titanic.” “Avatar” is a SF movie set in the 22nd century, on a planet named “Pandora”. In order to obtain the precious mineral resources in the planet human beings invade the planet with many mercenary soldiers. The natives of the planet who peacefully coexist with animals in the natural forests fiercely resist the human beings destroying forests and endangering their lives and the lives of the animals. The scenario is as follows:
the human beings create alter egos combining the DNA of the natives and humans and create Avatars in order to　gain the natives trust and win them over. The Avatars are sent to the native’s community to gaining information as well. Battles between the natives and humans start when the human beings continue to destroy forests and start mining before the negotiations reach a settlement. The Avatars being furious at the outrage take side with the natives and resist the terrestrial army, who are attacking the natives with gigantic future high-tech weapons and robots, by utilizing large herbivorous dinosaurs and flying dinosaurs living in the forests, and finally beat the army and send them back to Earth after a fierce battle. If we replace the terrestrial army with China and the natives with developing countries possessing resources, the situation that each region is confronting, becoming perplexed and enraged fearing for their future is similar to that in the movie. China’s expansion and invasion are horrible.

　Neighboring countries have become more cautious of China. The International Column in the Asahi Shimbun issue on March 13th ran the headlines, “India Accelerates the Expansion of Armaments” and “Confronting China with Introduction of Aircraft Carriers from Russia.”　In the articles, “The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh talked with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was visiting India, and reached an agreement in many fields such as purchasing aircraft and aircraft carriers. India is competing with China who is readying to go into the pelagic zone by constructing aircraft carriers. At the same time, Russia, with increasing caution toward China, is accelerating pushing their weapons to India. For India, Russia is the largest supplier of weapons, providing sixty to seventy percents of its arms, and has built a broad relationship with India by developing mainstay fighters, cruise missiles, and atomic submarines with them. These days, Russia is trying to regain lost ground with an agreement amounting to ten billion dollars while Israel and the U.S. have quickly increased their overtures to India
The highlight of the conference was handing over the aircraft carrier, ’Admiral Gorshkov,’ (approximately 45,000 ton) deployed in 1987 under the Soviet Union. Despite that they closed a basic contract in 2004 for 974 million dollars, the negotiation for the price ran into trouble because India wanted to update the equipment. This time, they concluded the negotiation for 2.3 billion dollars and Russia allegedly declared that they would hand over the carrier by late 2012. India currently possesses a carrier (approximately 28,000 ton) purchased from Britain. However, they hurried to obtain the substitution since the carrier was built in 1950s, used in the Falklands War in 1982 and become severely superannuated.
In addition to the Gorshkov, a domestic carrier of the 40,000 ton class is currently under construction in southern Kerala state and aims to go into service in 2014. Also, they had a contract for 16 MiG-29Ks, the carrier-based aircrafts of the Gorshkov, and some of them were transferred to India at the end of last year. India agreed on an additional purchase of 29 fighters and plans to deploy them to the new domestic carrier. There is a feeling of competition with China, having previously experienced a boundary dispute in 1962, in seeking reinforcement of naval power. While China hastened to build two domestic carriers, they constructed ports in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar (Burma) surrounding India. According to sources in the navy, India had increased its sense of caution that the ports might become military posts in the future. India increased the defense budget by 23.7% compared with the previous year in 2009-10 and raise it by 8% in 2010-11.
They are in the midst of modernization of their military strength costing 30 billion dollars for five years.” Putin’s visit to India was reported as “Resetting the relationships between Russia and India.” Russia continuously increased their arms export to India, with which Russia does not share a border, and India is the biggest customer for them. Based on the article, “India accounts for 30 percent of Russia’s arms exports in 2009 amounting to 7.4 billion dollars whereas China reaches 18 percent of Russian arms exports.” President Obama started to change his attitude toward China despite the fact that his previous policy had been to take China heavily into account at first. The start was COP 15 held in Belgium last year where China took an uncooperative attitude lacking integrity. Right after the New Year began, the U.S. announced its intent to sell their weapons to Taiwan. President Obama finally decided to step into issues, rattling China’s nerves, which he had banned since his inauguration. The interview with the Dalai Lama is part of this policy change. Tibet has large potential for mineral resources, essential to the IT industry, in the 21st century. That is a quite important key area not only for peace in Asia but also for the world economy.

　China held the Shanghai Expo this year, and kept expanding their economy through huge government funding, offsetting the influences of the Lehman Shock attacking the world right after the Beijing Olympics. This is because they can carry out infrastructure construction without any waste of time such as winning consent from residents. One-party dictatorship by the Communist Party enables such behavior. The expansion has produced many higher socioeconomic groups who are now running out to the world, including Japan, and going shopping. In the background of the richness, there are large numbers of people who have a family and are living in agricultural areas unable to enjoy the abundance.
China’s wealthy class is supported by sacrifices of ninety percent of the population. This structure reaches back to the past fact that the prosperity of Europe in the past was bolstered up by colonies in Africa and Asia, the white community in the U.S. was supported by black slaves, and even to the caste system of the emperor, the aristocracy, the civilian, and the slave contributing to the prosperity of ancient Rome. However, how long can this distorted structure be sustained? If the riots remain within Tibet or Hsinchiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China can still suppress them with weapons. But if the expansion of inconsistency between Han people develops into riots, is the current president, Hu Jintao, able to crush citizens with the troops, similar to what Deng Xiaoping did in the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989? Finding a solution for the economic inequality is an unavoidable subject for China
On the other hand, the U.S. has been preoccupied with fights against terrorism since the 9.11 terrorist attacks and has become exhausted by the continued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. America’s unilateral domination after the Cold War has been weakened and they have taken a stance to hold back from intervention in regions unfamiliar to them in order to downsize their over-commitments. It is the Hatoyama DPJ regime and the mass media in Japan that shake the Japan-US relations and cut down the strength of the Self-Defense Forces while China scales up military power and tries to acquire air and naval supremacy. The worst part is the Futenma issue where the current regime dropped the whole agreement under LDP rule against an international custom that international promises should be taken over even if regimes change. Can it be allowed? I feel so uneasy about which direction the Hatoyama regime is leading Japan to in the future.

　Under this situation where Russia and India are deepening their diplomatic and economic relations to compete with China, Japan should not only strengthen the relation with the U.S. but also make deep connections with Russia and India. At the same time, we should stop sticking to the three nonnuclear principles, which bind us, and abandoning the right to collective defense, and seek to become an independent nation by allowing arms exports. Otherwise, Japan will be incorporated into the Chinese sphere of influence. To avoid the worst scenario, Japan needs to gain aggressive military power. It is the reality of the logic of power is that the balance of power can be maintained only by possessing striking power as the deterrent.
However, the U.S. also wants to prevent Japan from having striking power. That’s why they aggressively encourage Japan to introduce the ballistic missile defense (BMD) system as defensive strength and do not let us allocate the budget to arms as offensive strength. Based on the articles in the International section of the Asahi Shimbun on March 13th, the U.S. put pressure on joining the BMD system. America’s intention is to keep China in check by putting Japan and Korea under its command. Russia and India declared that they will cooperate with each other even in the construction of an atomic power plant and they have already started to build a wall against China surely and steadily.
The abandonment of the restriction binding Japan and the birth of a new regime having strong leadership are essential to secure a clear position in this situation. I cannot count on the Hatoyama regime anymore. On this occasion, we should encourage politicians to realign the political world by starting up a genuine conservative party gathered under the flag, “Aiming for a rebuilt Japan as a proud nation,” as the trigger. Although Prime Minister Hatoyama insists that he can show the answer to the Futenma issue in May, his true intention is to tell Obama “Trust me” and to change his assertion in exchange for his resignation so that we should respect the agreement the U.S. and Japan decided even though the LDP regime reached the agreement. The shift may happen after his incumbency surpasses that of Hosokawa regime (263 days) at the beginning of June.
Prime Minister Hatoyama will stall for time on “the request for permission to arrest” by extending the session of the Diet and postpone the Upper House election to August. Then, he will announce his resignation and recommend that secretary General Ozawa leave his position as well. Next, he will field a candidate who is neither pro-Ozawa nor anti-Ozawa to compete with a candidate supported by the anti-Ozawa group (the candidate Ozawa supports will win the battle because the number of so-called Ozawa children and girls is sufficient). After raising his approval rating with a fierce battle, he will rush into the Upper House election. He will persuade Ozawa, who will shudder and believe that he may be arrested if he resigns, into resignation from General Secretary by telling Ozawa that he can control the new government similar to the Medvedev regime influenced by Putin. We definitely cannot allow the birth of a shadow Ozawa DJP regime, not for anything in the world.