BEIJING, March 31 (Xinhua) -- The international community needs to stay on high alert against the rightward turn of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and trend of remilitarization in Japan, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said here on Tuesday.
Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to a query. According to media reports, an SDF officer who had broken into Chinese embassy carrying a knife, has been sent to prosecutors by Japanese police.
This incident shows how toxic and dangerous the right-wing ideology and distorted view of history could be in Japan, Mao said. The National Defense Academy in Japan reportedly has an annual practice of paying group visits to the Yasukuni war shrine. In 2024, a former senior officer of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces became the shrine's chief priest, marking the first time ever that a retired admiral assumed the shrine's top position, Mao added.
The SDF has over the years invited radical far-rightist personnel who harbor hatred towards China to participate in teaching, and their textbooks are filled with contents distorting and whitewashing Japan's history of aggression during WWII, said Mao.
She noted that the parents of the SDF officer who broke into the Chinese embassy said they saw no radical behavior while he was growing up and receiving education in his hometown, and they had no idea at all why he acted like this.
Noting that the individual received nine months of training for reserve officers, Mao said questions about what kind of views he was indoctrinated by the SDF and what kind of training he received deserve more attention, probe and deep pondering.
China once again urges the Japanese side to have a thorough investigation into the incident and get rid of the root cause for such incidents once and for all, Mao added. ■
