Japan cautioned against China’s rapid acceleration of military activity stretching from its southwestern coasts to the Pacific, describing the moves in a new defense report Tuesday as the biggest strategic challenge. China’s growing military cooperation with Russia also poses serious security concerns to Japan, along with increasing tension around Taiwan and threats coming from North Korea, the Defense Ministry said in the annual report submitted to the Cabinet. “The international society is in a new crisis era as it faces the biggest challenges since the end of World War II,” the report said, citing significant changes to the global power balance while raising concerns about an escalation of the China-U.S. rivalry. The security threats aChina’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian criticized the white paper, saying it “adopts a wrongful perception of China, unjustifiably interferes in China’s internal affairs, and plays up the so-called China threat.” Beijing has lodged protests with Japan, Lin said, defending China’s military activities as “legitimate and reasonable.” He urged Japan to reflect on its wartime past and “stop hyping tension in the region and China-related issues as a pretext to justify its military buildup.”re concentrated in the Indo-Pacific, where Japan is located, and could get worse in the future, the report said.

Full report : White paper submitted by defense ministry to the Japanese cabinet says China’s military activity its biggest strategic challenge.