Saadet Gokce
05 August 2026•Update: 05 August 2026
China has rejected Japan's defense white paper, which described its military activities as an "unprecedented" strategic challenge, a Defense Ministry statement said on Wednesday.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Chen Xi said on Tuesday that the paper is "filled with false narratives, exaggerates the severity of crisis in the security environment surrounding Japan, and hypes up the so-called 'China threat'," according to the statement posted through US social media platform X.
Beijing's remarks came after Japan released a 600-page white paper, "Defense of Japan 2026," which said China's military activities intensified over the past year, including aircraft carrier operations in the Pacific, unusually close approaches by Chinese fighter jets to Japanese aircraft, and a radar lock-on incident.
The report said that China's external posture and military activities are "a matter of serious concern" and present an "unprecedented" strategic challenge, according to Kyodo News.
It also cautioned that Beijing is seeking to normalize its military presence around Taiwan.
"We are strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to it," he said.
The spokesperson accused Japan of "fabricating excuses for itself to break free from restrictions on its defense forces."
The Taiwan issue concerns "China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Chen said, adding that it is the political foundation of China-Japan relations and "a red line that must not be crossed."
He urged Japan's authorities to "profoundly reflect on its history of aggression, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, stop misleading the Japanese public and the international community, and refrain from going further down the wrong path of remilitarization."
