Japan PM says ready to be more assertive against China: Media

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after delivering his policy speech at the Lower House of Parliament in Tokyo on October 15, 2013. -- FILE PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in an interview published on Saturday, said Japan was ready to be more assertive in guarding against what he said might be an attempt by China to use force to attain its diplomatic goals.


Mr Abe, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said he had realised during recent meetings with South East Asian leaders that the region was looking for leadership from Tokyo in terms of security amid China's more forthright diplomacy.



Relations between Japan and China have deteriorated sharply in the past year, with the main sticking point being conflicting claims to uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, known in Japanese as the Senkaku Islands and in China as Diaoyu.


China is also at odds with several South East Asian countries, which contest its claims to wide swathes of the South China Sea.


Mr Tang made no reference to Mr Abe's latest comments, but said any attempt to contain China either amounted to a distorted view of China or "the rendering of an image of the 'Chinese menace' to achieve an ulterior political goal".



Mr Abe took office last year for a rare second term and is seen as a hawkish nationalist with a conservative agenda that includes revising a post-war pacifist Constitution drafted by the United States, strengthening Japan's defence posture and recasting wartime history with a less apologetic tone.

He is likely to visit the Yasukuni shrine by the end of the year, a move certain to outrage China, which sees the site as glorifying war criminals.