The Senkaku Islands and Japan
177as 28.3% from the previous year (64.5% in 2012). In recent years, the PRC
has insisted that Japan “stole the Islands” or “challenges the post-war
regime.” Plus, the Chinese government has been using propaganda saying
that, “Japan revives militarism again,” as an excuse for developing its
military capabilities further and for preventing a revival of the Japan-U.S.
alliance.
No less serious is the fact that 95% of Japanese and 98.1% of Chinese
respondents said they depend only on their national media for information
about the problem of the Senkaku Islands. Moreover, 84.5% of the
Chinese respondents believed their national media was fair and objective,
while only 25.4% of the Japanese respondents thought their media was
objective.
From these facts, it is possible to say that the Chinese communist
government has been manipulating information well and making ordinary
people believe their official standpoints. In short, it is possible for the
Chinese government to make public sentiment toward Japan worse or
better.
Factors of shaping current Abe’s defense and foreign policies
The Abe administration understands that losing or damaging an alliance
would bring about a power vacuum and damages the balance of power in
the region. The PRC would try to fill in the power vacuum with all its
power to take over the hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. For example,
the PRC occupied the Mischief Reef of the Philippines in 1995 after the
withdrawal of the U.S. forces in 1995 and the PRC has been active in the
South China Sea since the withdrawal of the former Soviet naval force
from Cam Ranh Bay of Vietnam in the 1990’s.^26
As I have already mentioned, Japan has exclusively depended on the
United States for securing its national defensem although has been much
criticism of this in Japan. Japan has always feared being abandoned by the
United States and this obsession makes Japan offer several contributions
to the USA. For this reason, the ultimate goal of Abe administration is not
to be free from the constraint of America through the establishment of
massive military forces, but rather to maintain America’s commitment to
Japan’s defense by offering further military or financial contributions to
the USA.
(^26) Speech of Defense minister Onodera at a conference about current security of
Japan, 26 August 2013.