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TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried Tuesday to prevent a row with China from spiralling after a top aide charged that Japan risks becoming a Chinese province due to Beijing's military spending.
China rejected the remarks by Shoichi Nakagawa, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and questioned his motivations.
Nakagawa had called on Japan to question China's future intentions, in a sharp change from the Abe government's conciliatory tone on Beijing.
"If something goes awry in Taiwan in the next 15 years, then within 20 years Japan might become just another one of China's provinces," Nakagawa said Monday in the central city of Nagoya, as quoted by the Sankei Shimbun daily.
"If Taiwan comes under (China's) complete rule, Japan could be next," he was quoted as saying later at parliament. Officials said they did not have a transcript of his remarks.
Abe has worked to ease tensions between Japan and China since taking office in September, despite a career as a hardliner on security issues. He quickly played down Nakagawa's comments.
"It is meaningless to discuss just a part of the entire speech," Abe told reporters. "It's also been said in the past that Japan would become the 51st state of the United States."
Nakagawa is known for his hawkish views. He has called in recent months for Japan to consider developing nuclear weapons and to reconsider its apology to women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II.
Nakagawa charged that China had ambitions beyond Taiwan, where nationalists fled from the mainland after losing the civil war in 1949. Beijing considers the island a province awaiting reunification.
"China has behaved calmly up to now in rising peacefully, but when the year 2010 is over, there is a possibility that it could continue in a non-peaceful way," Nakagawa said, as quoted by Kyodo News.
He said that if China is not seeking "hegemony," then it should make its military spending "more transparent and show that by its actions."
He singled out China's internationally condemned test of a satellite-killer missile in January. China became the third country after the United States and the former Soviet Union to shoot down an object in space.
"It wouldn't be odd if it conducted the experiment with Japan's satellite launches in mind," Nakagawa said.
Japan has repeatedly voiced concern about Beijing's growing military expenditure, a view shared last week by US Vice President Dick Cheney on a tour of Asia and Australia.
China on Tuesday rejected the remarks by both Nakagawa and Cheney and called on Japan itself to be more transparent.
"Japan is much smaller than China but still has a huge military expenditure. Meanwhile, it makes claims of a Chinese threat," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news briefing in Beijing.
"So we should question what is the real purpose and motivation behind that. Don't you feel that is strange?"
Abe has sought to mend ties between Japan and China which were badly strained by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a controversial war shrine.
But Abe's popularity has tumbled since his initial diplomatic successes, with voters questioning his authority after a series of gaffes by top aides. - AFP/ir
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