Amid all the noise about the economic reforms launched last week by China, it was easy to overlook another important change. The Chinese government is setting up a National Security Council, co-ordinating its military, intelligence and domestic security structures. The model is said to be America’s NSC. But China’s move also parallels developments in Japan, where Shinzo Abe’s government is also setting up a National Security Council.
Under ordinary circumstances, this modernisation of military and security structures would not be cause for concern. But these are not ordinary times. For the past year, China and Japan have been engaged in dangerous military jostling, as they push their rival territorial claims to some uninhabited islands, known as the Senkaku to the Japanese and the Diaoyu to the Chinese. In one recent week, Japan scrambled fighter jets three times in response to Chinese overflights. China, meanwhile, complains that Japanese ships came provocatively close to a recent live-fire exercise carried out by its navy. With tensions high, the revamping of the two countries’ security structures takes on a more ominous tone.
It is hard to believe that either China or Japan actually wants a war. The bigger risk is that military posturing around the islands will lead to an accidental clash – and that the governments of both nations would then be trapped by their own nationalist rhetoric, making it very hard to climb down.