By LI YANG
It is no coincidence that the Japanese Ministry of Defense made public for the first time a video clip showing a test firing of the country's first hypersonic missile on Monday, the same day the Japanese side reported that the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy Shandong aircraft carrier strike group finished its six-day operation in the West Pacific waters to the east of Taiwan island.
As shown by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, hypersonic missiles are hard to intercept, and are useful anti-ship weapons targeting large battleships such as aircraft carriers. Although Tokyo says the hypersonic missiles a part of its "island defense system", they are 100 percent offensive weapons.
With its de facto aircraft carrier Izumo, Japan is becoming one of the few countries that have both modern aircraft carrier strike groups as well as anti-aircraft carrier missiles.
As a matter of fact, the Shandong aircraft carrier strike group's operation was an annual routine drill not targeted at any other country. It is Japan that has been doing the United States' bidding which has been raising tensions in the waters and strained ties with China.
Japan has also thrown itself to the front to interfere in the maritime disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea by intensifying its military cooperation with the latter targeting China.
On July 4, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's destroyer Suzutsuki sailed into China's waters off Zhejiang province where China had said it would conduct naval drills. This represents the first time the Japanese navy has entered China's territorial waters without an invitation or approval from the latter after the end of the World War II. Yet Tokyo later tried to attribute such grave violation of China's territorial integrity and sovereignty to "technical errors".
It is not China that is antagonizing Japan but the other way round. The PLA Navy's increasingly frequent inoffensive passage through the international water routes close to Japanese islands is its legal right to exercise navigational freedom. Something Japan and the US have done for a long time in the Asia-Pacific. Japan is just being paid back in kind.
China's actions are to defend its own territorial integrity and sovereignty and core development interests, while the joint actions of Japan and the US in the region are to provoke and intimidate China.
Japan can avoid making China a "security threat" to itself by steering clear of the Taiwan question and the South China Sea disputes between Beijing and Manila, and stopping assuming the role of a US proxy in the region.
