Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Last week we highlighted a new EU-funded report on EU-China relations: “Brussels-Beijing: Changing the Game?”.  Amongst other things, the report complains about EU-Japan relations, saying that very little progress has been made on the ambitious objectives embodied in the 2001 EU-Japan Action Plan for Cooperation, and that the only reason Japan takes any interest in the EU’s views on East Asia is because of China’s lobbying for the EU to lift the arms embargo.  This week has been a case in point, with Japan complaining about a French helicopter equipment deal with China.

A French defence firm, DCNS, is selling to China a system that enables ship-based helicopters to land in bad weather, and on 18 March Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan had “expressed our concerns…[and] conveyed our thoughts” in January but that the sale had gone ahead.

The equipment, which allows a helicopter to land on its mother ship in bad weather without help from the crew, is not covered by the arms embargo.  But, according to Japanese sources, China is to use this equipment on maritime surveillance vessels of the sort that have been regularly infringing Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.  It is thought that 11 sets of the equipment have been sold to China.

On 17 March, confirming Japan’s growing concerns about its relations with China, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a graduation ceremony at the National Defence Academy that Japan needs to play a larger role within the Japan-US security alliance in order to increase the effectiveness of its deterrence policy.  According to a report from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), Abe told the graduates that the security environment surrounding Japan had “become increasingly severe” and that “Japan’s land, sea, and air are facing continued provocation”.

Abe reiterated that 2013 will see the first increase in Japan’s defence budget for 11 years, and he said that he intended to review the country’s defence programme guidelines in order “to improve the capabilities of the Self-Defence Forces in the southwestern and other regions”.  The disputed Senkaku Islands are located off the south-western end of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.

In separate news, China has reformed its maritime law enforcement agencies, bringing them within a single administrative unit.  The new China Coast Guard is to be brought under a restructured State Oceanic Administration (SOA) and will combine the marine surveillance fleet, the Public Security Ministry’s coastguard patrols, the Agriculture Ministry’s fisheries patrols, and the anti-smuggling operations of the General Administration of Customs.

The official news agency Xinhua reported on 19 March that “the SOA’s restructuring was carried out by the new cabinet to implement maritime law enforcement and more efficiently safeguard the country’s sovereignty over territorial waters”.