Japan is preparing to establish missile-launching capabilities on an island almost 70 miles from Taiwan.
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said the government is hoping to complete the military infrastructure project on the island of Yonaguni in the next five years.
“It depends on the progress of preparing facilities, but we are planning fiscal 2030,” the minister said on Tuesday.
“Currently, we are proceeding with necessary tasks, such as basic studies concerning facility improvements for the deployment of troops to the eastern side of the garrison,” Koizumi said.
Type-03 medium-range surface-to-air guided missiles set up on the island would be capable of shooting down encroaching aircraft and ballistic missiles.
Yonaguni, located on the outskirts of Okinawa Prefecture, is one of Japan’s Westernmost islands. The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force set up a coastal observation unit on Yonaguni in 2016, and the island currently hosts a small base.
It sits just 68 miles from the island of Taiwan, the territory claimed by the People’s Republic of China that has for years considered itself an independent nation.
China has been outraged with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for months after she acknowledged a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan as a national security threat that could warrant a military response from Tokyo.
Members of the Beijing elite called Takaichi an “evil witch,” and a diplomat stationed in Japan even threatened to “cut off” her “filthy head” following her comments.
That ire only grew as Takaichi repeatedly refused to walk back her position and eventually dominated a snap election on a platform explicitly rewriting the post-war constitution of Japan that abolished its right to field a full military.
Yonaguni is also not far from the Senkaku Islands, an archipelago that the United States handed back to Japan in 1971.
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Though uninhabited, these islands have become a wedge between Japan and the People’s Republic, which claims the territory based on its pre-World War II ownership.
The Japanese coast guard has reportedly warned commercial fishermen to avoid the waters around the Senkaku Islands amid the tensions with Beijing.