The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

The contrast between the treatment of Japan in the
2006 and 2008 Defense White Papers on this point is
notable. The 2006 Defense White Paper states that the
United States and Japan are strengthening their alliance
to achieve operational integration while Tokyo
seeks to revise Japan’s constitution to permit collective
self-defense as it builds a more externally-oriented
defense posture. 69 The 2008 Defense White Paper’s
assessment of China’s security situation does not even
mention Japan. The United States is charged with
“further consolidating its military alliance” without
any reference to Japan. 70 It is unlikely that Beijing had
a change of heart about Japan or the importance of the
U.S.-Japanese security alliance. Nonetheless, the years
2006-09 demonstrate that Beijing took considerable effort
to transform Sino-Japanese defense links and the
PLA placed great emphasis on its military diplomacy
with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF).
A clear indication of the new direction in the PLA’s
military diplomacy 71 was to occur in September 2006,
when Japan’s Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited
China, and in August 2007, when China’s Defense
Minister General Cao Gangchuan returned his courtesy—the
first time in 10 years a Chinese Defense
Minister had visited Japan. During his visit, General
Cao invited Japanese officers to observe a PLA exercise
that September—the first time Japanese officers
ever observed a Chinese military exercise. The following
November, the destroyer Shenzhen made the first
port call any PLAN vessel had ever made in Japan. In
March 2008, Japan’s Vice-Minister of Defense, Kohei
Masuda met with Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant
General Ma Xiaotian in Beijing for the eighth Sino-
Japanese defense security consultations that had been
initiated in 1997. They reached an accord on the Tai-
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