Japan’s latest defence policy has triggered another sharp reaction from Beijing, with China’s state-linked Global Times accusing Tokyo of exploiting regional security threats as a pretext for “remilitarization.” The article follows China’s broader campaign against Japan’s growing defence capabilities and its increasingly explicit concerns about Taiwan and Chinese military activity.
At first glance, the Chinese argument appears straightforward: Japan is allegedly exaggerating threats from China and North Korea to escape its post-1945 pacifist restrictions and build an offensive military. But a closer examination reveals a much more complicated picture.
The facts show that Japan is indeed expanding its military capabilities. However, the claim that this expansion is simply an aggressive Japanese “remilitarization” leaves out the security environment that Tokyo says is driving the change — including China’s expanding military reach, increasing activity around Taiwan, North Korean missile development and deeper China-Russia military cooperation.
What Does the Global Times Article Actually Claim?
The Global Times article responds to comments from China’s Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Chen Xi concerning Japan’s recent military activities.
Beijing argues that Japan’s references to a deteriorating regional security environment are merely a justification for abandoning its traditionally “exclusively defense-oriented” policy. It specifically points to Japan’s Tomahawk cruise-missile test and a test involving a new missile as evidence of an increasingly offensive Japanese military posture.
The article then moves beyond technical military criticism into a much broader political accusation, describing Japan’s trajectory as “remilitarization” and warning against what Beijing characterizes as Japanese “neo-militarism.”
This distinction is important.
A factual report would say Japan is increasing long-range strike and defence capabilities. A political narrative interprets those developments as proof that Japan intends to revive militarism.
The Global Times article moves decisively into the second category.
Is Japan Really Increasing Its Military Capabilities?
Japan is significantly strengthening its defence capabilities.
The Japanese government has been implementing major defence reforms, including greater investment in stand-off weapons, missile defence, intelligence, surveillance, space, cyber capabilities and longer-range strike systems.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense itself documents these changes and has described the country’s security environment as increasingly severe.
The latest controversy is therefore not based on an invented development.
Japan is genuinely changing its military posture.
But this is where the Chinese narrative becomes incomplete.
Does Japan’s Military Expansion Automatically Mean “Remilitarization”?
The word “remilitarization” carries a powerful historical meaning because of Japan’s wartime history.
But modern Japan already has a highly capable Self-Defense Force operating under constitutional and legal restrictions. Its current defence expansion is occurring within an existing alliance framework with the United States and within Japan’s own evolving interpretation of collective self-defence and national security.
Japan is not announcing a return to the Imperial Japanese military model.
Instead, Tokyo argues that its defence changes are intended to improve deterrence in an increasingly dangerous regional environment.
That does not mean every Japanese defence decision is automatically defensive or beyond criticism. Long-range strike capabilities can have offensive as well as defensive applications.
But equating military modernization with historical Japanese militarism is a political interpretation, not a neutral fact.
What China Leaves Out: The Regional Security Environment
This is arguably the biggest weakness in the Global Times narrative.
Japan’s military transformation is not occurring in a vacuum.
China’s military activity around Taiwan has expanded significantly, while Chinese naval forces have increasingly operated farther into the Western Pacific.
Japan’s own defence reporting has repeatedly identified China’s military expansion as a major security concern. Its 2025 defence assessment, for example, described the military balance across the Taiwan Strait as increasingly favourable to China and highlighted China’s growing military activities around Taiwan.
The 2026 Japanese defence debate has gone further.
Japan’s latest defence white paper identifies China as an unprecedented strategic challenge and highlights the growing importance of Taiwan Strait security.
Therefore, when Beijing says Japan is simply inventing a “China threat,” the evidence does not support such a simplistic conclusion.
There is a genuine military competition taking place.
The disagreement is over its causes, intentions and responsibility.
China’s Military Activities Are Also Part of the Equation
Another missing element in the Global Times article is China’s own military expansion.
Japan has documented Chinese naval movements around its territory. In June, Japan reported monitoring a Chinese aircraft carrier and accompanying destroyers moving through waters between Okinawa and Miyako-jima toward the East China Sea.
In July, Chinese naval forces also conducted live-fire activity inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, according to reporting on the incident.
China has also conducted strategic air patrols with Russia over the Sea of Japan, East China Sea and Western Pacific. Chinese state media presented those operations as routine strategic patrols, while Japan scrambled aircraft in response.
These activities do not prove that China intends to attack Japan.
But they demonstrate something important:
Japan’s security concerns are not purely hypothetical.
That does not make every Japanese policy automatically justified. It simply means Beijing’s claim that Tokyo is manufacturing the entire security problem is not supported by the broader record.
North Korea Makes Japan’s Security Argument Stronger
China’s narrative also tends to treat Japan’s security concerns as if they are almost entirely China-related.
They are not.
North Korea remains another major factor.
Pyongyang continues to develop ballistic-missile capabilities, while its military cooperation with Russia has generated additional concerns in Japan and elsewhere.
Japan therefore faces a security environment involving China, North Korea and Russia simultaneously.
Japan’s 2026 defence assessment also highlights the increasingly interconnected security environment stretching across the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions.
That makes Tokyo’s argument for stronger deterrence considerably more credible than the Global Times presentation suggests.
The “Japan Is Preparing for War” Narrative
The most important propaganda technique in the article is not the discussion of missiles.
It is the intentional connection between Japanese military modernization and an alleged desire to revive militarism.
The argument follows a familiar pattern: Japan increases defence capabilities → Japan is abandoning pacifism → Japan is becoming militaristic → Japan threatens regional peace.
The problem is the missing middle.
A military capability does not automatically establish military intent.
Japan’s acquisition of long-range missiles can be interpreted as preparation for offensive warfare, but it can also be interpreted as an attempt to strengthen deterrence against a larger military power.
The correct analytical question is therefore: What is Japan’s military capability, what legal and political restrictions govern its use, and what strategic environment is driving the change?
That produces a much more complicated picture than the Global Times headline.
Why Beijing Uses the Word “Remilitarization”
There is a clear strategic reason.
The term “remilitarization” connects contemporary Japan with its imperial past.
That historical memory remains extremely powerful across East Asia.
By portraying Japan’s current defence reforms as a return to militarism, Beijing can frame itself as the defender of regional peace rather than as one of the principal actors in the current military competition.
This is an important element of China’s information strategy.
The narrative shifts attention from China’s military expansion to Japan’s response to it.
That does not necessarily mean every Chinese concern about Japan is fabricated.
Japan’s wartime history is real, and Asian countries have legitimate reasons to scrutinize Japanese military policy.
But history can also be selectively used as a political instrument.
The Bigger Chinese Security Narrative
The Global Times article should therefore be viewed within a much wider Chinese security narrative.
Beijing repeatedly presents three interconnected arguments.
First, China is rising peacefully and its military development is defensive.
Second, the United States is attempting to contain China’s rise through alliances.
Third, Japan is being encouraged by Washington to abandon pacifism and become a frontline military power against China.
This narrative is strategically useful to Beijing because it turns the regional security debate into a contest between an allegedly provocative US-Japan alliance and a supposedly defensive China.
But reality is more complicated.
The United States is strengthening alliances partly because China is becoming more militarily capable.
China is strengthening its military partly because it perceives US alliances as a threat.
Japan is strengthening its military partly because it perceives China and North Korea as threats.
And those Japanese moves then become evidence for Beijing that Japan is becoming militaristic.
This is the classic security dilemma.
Japan’s Defence Expansion Could Actually Strengthen China’s Narrative
There is an important irony here.
The more Japan expands its military capabilities, the easier it becomes for Beijing to argue that its warnings about Japanese militarism are justified.
This is why China’s information strategy can be effective even when some of its claims are exaggerated.
Japan is providing Beijing with genuine developments — missile procurement, longer-range strike capabilities, defence spending increases and deeper military cooperation with the United States — that can then be presented without the broader strategic context.
The result is a powerful but incomplete story.
Is Japan Completely Innocent?
A serious fact-check should also avoid simply reversing the propaganda.
Japan is not beyond criticism.
Tokyo’s development of longer-range strike capabilities represents a meaningful shift from the more restrained defence posture that characterized much of the postwar period.
Japan is also strengthening defence cooperation with the United States, NATO partners and other Indo-Pacific countries.
That can increase deterrence, but it can also increase China’s perception of encirclement.
Japan therefore has a responsibility to maintain transparency about military capabilities, strategic objectives and the legal framework governing their use.
Criticizing Chinese propaganda does not require pretending that Japanese military expansion has no strategic consequences.
It does.
But the Chinese Argument Has a Major Contradiction
There is a deeper contradiction in Beijing’s argument.
China argues that Japan should not respond militarily to China’s growing capabilities because doing so creates instability.
Yet China itself continues to expand its military reach.
Chinese naval forces are operating farther from China’s immediate coastline. Chinese-Russian military patrols are expanding. Chinese military activity around Taiwan has increased. And Beijing continues to develop capabilities designed to deny access to foreign forces in the Western Pacific.
China can legitimately argue that these activities are defensive.
But Japan can make the same argument.
If China’s military modernization is defensive, Japan’s military modernization cannot automatically be classified as aggressive simply because Beijing dislikes its direction.
That is the central logical weakness in the Global Times argument.
What Is Beijing Really Worried About?
The deeper Chinese concern may not be Japan alone.
It is the possibility that Japan becomes a much more capable military pillar of the US-led Indo-Pacific security network.
That would have enormous strategic consequences.
Japan possesses advanced technology, a sophisticated industrial base, a powerful navy and air force, significant economic resources and a strategically important geographical position.
If Japan continues developing longer-range strike, missile defence, intelligence and maritime capabilities while deepening cooperation with the United States, Australia, the Philippines, Europe and other partners, China’s strategic environment becomes considerably more complicated.
Beijing therefore has a strong incentive to discourage Japan from moving further in that direction.
The “remilitarization” narrative serves precisely that purpose.
The Taiwan Factor Is the Hidden Centre of the Dispute
Taiwan is perhaps the most important issue behind the current China-Japan confrontation.
Japan is geographically close to Taiwan.
Any major military conflict around Taiwan could potentially affect Japanese territory, sea lanes, US bases in Japan and the security of the southwestern Japanese islands.
Japan therefore has a direct strategic interest in developments across the Taiwan Strait.
China, meanwhile, considers Taiwan an internal issue and strongly opposes Japanese involvement.
This produces a fundamental clash.
Beijing sees Japanese involvement in Taiwan as interference. Tokyo increasingly sees Taiwan Strait stability as directly connected to Japanese security.
Neither side is likely to abandon that position easily.
What Is True and What Is Propaganda?
The Global Times article contains a genuine factual foundation: Japan is expanding its defence capabilities and developing longer-range strike weapons.
But its interpretation is heavily politicized.
The evidence does not establish that Japan’s military reforms are simply a plan to revive Japanese imperial militarism.
Nor does the broader regional security environment support the idea that Japan invented the threats it cites.
China’s military expansion, increasing activity around Taiwan and the Western Pacific, North Korea’s missile capabilities and Russia’s growing military cooperation with China and North Korea all form part of the strategic context.
Therefore, the strongest fact-check conclusion is: The military developments described by Chinese media are real; the interpretation that they prove Japanese “neo-militarism” is an unproven political narrative.
China’s Potential Security Strategy in the Region
There is also a broader strategic objective behind this messaging.
China wants to prevent the Indo-Pacific from developing into a tightly integrated network of US-aligned military partnerships.
Japan is central to that network.
If Tokyo continues deepening defence cooperation with the United States, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, European powers and NATO partners, China could increasingly face a coordinated security environment rather than isolated bilateral relationships.
Consequently, portraying Japan as a dangerous military actor can help Beijing achieve several objectives at once:
undermine Japan’s international credibility, discourage regional countries from supporting Japanese defence expansion, strengthen Chinese influence over historical narratives, and justify China’s own military posture as a defensive response.
That is much more strategically significant than a simple dispute over a missile test.
The Information War Is Becoming Part of the Security Competition
The China-Japan confrontation is therefore no longer limited to ships, aircraft and missiles.
It increasingly includes information, historical memory and competing narratives about who is responsible for regional instability.
China says Japan is destabilizing Asia.
Japan says China’s growing military power is destabilizing the region.
The United States argues that deterrence prevents conflict.
Beijing argues that US alliances create confrontation.
All of these narratives contain elements of truth, but none should be accepted without examining the underlying evidence.
The danger comes when political messaging replaces factual analysis.
Don’t Confuse China’s Narrative With the Facts
The Global Times article should not simply be dismissed because it comes from Chinese state-linked media. Some of the military developments it describes are real and deserve scrutiny.
But the article’s broader conclusion requires much more skepticism.
Japan is increasing defence spending and developing longer-range capabilities.
Japan is moving toward a more capable military posture.
But that does not by itself prove that Japan is returning to pre-1945 militarism.
The missing context is China’s own military expansion, the Taiwan Strait crisis, North Korea’s missile program, China-Russia military cooperation and the broader transformation of the Indo-Pacific security environment.
The real story is therefore not simply “Japan is remilitarizing.”
It is the emergence of a dangerous regional security cycle:
China expands → Japan responds → China calls the response militarization → Japan cites China’s reaction as evidence of the threat → both sides strengthen their military posture.
That cycle could become more consequential than any individual missile test.
China’s concerns about Japanese military expansion are legitimate subjects for debate, but the Global Times turns those legitimate security questions into a one-sided narrative that places almost all responsibility for regional instability on Japan while minimizing China’s own role in the changing security balance.
