"Beijing has reacted angrily to the release on Friday of Japan's updated defence policy,
which described China's military build-up as a global concern.
Criticising Tokyo's comments as "irresponsible",
Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokesman, said...
The new National Defence Policy Guidelines unveiled in Tokyo
are a fairly dramatic realignment of Japan's military posture...
The emphasis turns firmly away from defending areas to the north of the Japanese archipelago,
a hangover from the Cold War
but also out of concern for the unpredictable and nuclear-armed regime in North Korea,
to a more flexible and fluid ability to respond to incursions into Japanese territory in the far south,
particularly around remote Okinawan Islands.
It was in this theatre that a Chinese fishing boat
clashed with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel in early September,
triggering the worst diplomatic dispute between Beijing and Tokyo for a decade.
"And of course the Chinese knew that the report was to be issued today,
so I think there is little likelihood that China's announcement this week
that it is constructing an aircraft carrier is a coincidence...""
Telegraph
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