Japan says it remains open to dialogue with China, rejects ‘new militarism’ label

SINGAPORE – Japan’s Minister of Defence Shinjiro Koizumi rejected Chinese accusations of “new militarism”, insisting that Tokyo remains a peace-loving nation and is committed to keeping channels open with Beijing even as it rapidly builds up its military and loosens its rules for arms exports.

Speaking at a plenary session on managing regional tensions amid global competition at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Koizumi said it was “strange” that Japan is now being painted as the one returning to militarism, despite not possessing nuclear weapons or strategic bombers.

“Some of you may have heard the term ‘new militarism’ – but nothing could be further from the truth,” he said on May 31.

In a veiled reference to China, he added: “Think about it: There’s a country that has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Japan has neither of such weapons and yet Japan is labelled in this way – isn’t it strange?”

Beijing has in recent months stepped up its criticism of what it calls rising militarism in Japan, charging that its neighbour’s expanding military ambitions under its right-leaning government are threatening global peace and stability as Tokyo ramps up defence spending and long-range strike capabilities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also took aim at Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s re-militarisation push during his summit with US President Donald Trump in Beijing in mid-May, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the meeting.

Several sources told the newspaper that the Chinese leader’s remarks on Japan were the most heated part of the talks, and that US officials were caught off guard as Japan had not featured in bilateral discussions leading up to the summit.

In his opening speech at the plenary session, Koizumi argued that since the end of World War II, Japan has consistently respected international law, including the United Nations Charter, and has sought to maintain and strengthen a free, rules-based international order.

“Japan’s past as a peace-loving nation has been valued by the region and by the international community, and this fact will not be shaken by false claims,” Koizumi said.

‘Open to dialogue’

The minister stressed that Japan wants to keep talking to China, even as bilateral ties have been strained since Takaichi sparked a diplomatic spat with Beijing over her November 2025 remarks that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

Koizumi noted that he last held a “frank discussion” with his Chinese counterpart at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Malaysia on Nov 1 and said he was “feeling sad” that the two men could not meet on the sidelines of this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue.

“Differences in perception and friction do arise between nations,” he said. “At such times, what is needed is not the repetition of unfounded accusations in the absence of the other side but direct and candid dialogue. Japan’s door to dialogue is always open.”

Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun was absent from the Shangri-La Dialogue for a second straight year. Beijing said on May 28 it was sending a delegation of “experts and scholars” from the People’s Liberation Army to the security forum instead.

Despite Dong’s absence, the Chinese response to Koizumi’s remarks remained robust.

During the question-and-answer session after his speech, Chinese delegate Shen Zhixiong challenged Japan for not expressing remorse to other Asian countries for its aggression during World War II and asked if the country would apologise to China, South Korea, and South-east Asian countries that it had invaded.

A day before Koizumi’s speech, the leader of China’s official delegation, Major General Meng Xiangqing, invoked the Tokyo war-crimes tribunals as having “forever nailed the crimes of Japanese militarism to history’s pillar of shame”.

He also warned against any revival of militarist thinking and questioned “whether a country that had not fully confronted its wartime past could win the trust of its Asian neighbours”.

Speaking to The Straits Times after Koizumi’s comments, Chinese delegate Xiao Qian of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University argued that “if there is no proper understanding of history, we can’t move on”.

She further suggested Koizumi’s forceful rejection of the “new militarism” label could have been influenced by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s speech a day earlier, surmising that the Japanese Defence Minister “is encouraged by the US, based on Hegseth’s speech and the call on Asian countries to be more aggressive in defence spending”.

Hegseth, in his address at the Shangri-La Dialogue on May 30, lauded the response of Indo-Pacific partners, including Japan, to the Trump administration’s expectation that they spend 3.5 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence, calling them “true partners” and “model allies”.