Japan seeks record $50b defense budget with eye on China

Bloomberg

Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking a record $50 billion annual budget that would entail the largest percentage jump in spending in eight years as it seeks to bolster its capabilities amid simmering tensions with China.
If granted in full, the 5.5 trillion yen budget request for the year starting in April would amount to a 2.6% increase on the previous year, which would be the largest annual increase since 2014, the ministry said on Tuesday.
The total amount could exceed the pacifist nation’s traditional limit of 1% of gross domestic product, if additional annual spending of about 200 billion yen on the realignment of US Forces in Japan is included.
China’s government criticised the record budget request. Japan is “trying to find excuses to justify their decision to increase military spending,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing in Beijing. “China hopes Japan can do things that are conducive to regional peace more than the opposite,” he added.
Japan’s defense spending was about a fifth of China’s in 2019, according to the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute.
Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told Bloomberg in an interview in June the government would spend what is required, without necessarily maintaining the 1% ceiling. His comments came after Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga vowed in a joint statement with US President Joe Biden in April to bolster his country’s defense capabilities.
Japan will spend 84 billion yen ($765 million) on space-related spending, much of it to be used to improve the ability to track objects in space and 34.5 billion yen to bolster the country’s cyber warfare capabilities.
The country will also spend 78 billion yen for eight Lockheed Martin F-35A warplanes and 52 billion yen for four
F-35B warplanes.