TOKYO — Japan’s cabinet on Friday approved the country’s biggest increase in military spending in decades, as officials expressed growing concern about the possibility of being pulled into a conflict over Taiwan.

The increase of 6.5 percent is part of the largest annual budget package in Japan’s history, totaling more than $940 billion. It includes hundreds of billions in spending meant to help the economy recover from damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic.

It also includes more than $51.5 billion for the military, reflecting a substantial increase in a defense budget far smaller than that of its ally the United States or of China, the regional giant. Officials have argued that the spending is needed to protect Japan in a security environment that is becoming “more challenging at unprecedented speed.”

In recent months, Japanese politicians and policymakers have said that regional stability is facing growing threats because of tensions between the United States and China, which some fear could lead to conflict over Taiwan, accidental or otherwise.

In light of those concerns, officials have increased the pace and scope of military exercises with the United States and other nations, and they have accelerated spending on projects seen as key to protecting Japan against a possible conflict near its shores.

The spending approved by the cabinet is less than what Japan’s defense ministry requested this summer. While large by Japanese standards, it is far below the military budgets of the United States, at around $778 billion, and China, estimated at $252 billion. The new figure includes spending approved last month in Japan’s largest-ever supplementary defense budget.

Japan’s Parliament must still approve the budget figures, but there is little doubt that it will do so.

Military spending in Japan has increased steadily since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in 2012, promising to strengthen the country’s military forces and revise its pacifist Constitution. That charter, drawn up by the American occupiers after World War II, forbids Japan to wage war except in self-defense. Conservative politicians have long sought to change that provision, arguing that the country needs more flexibility to defend itself against regional threats.

For many years, that meant North Korea, whose nuclear and missile tests were seen as posing a threat to Japan. But in recent years, Japan has come to see a greater danger in China’s military buildup and its increasing assertiveness in the region.

Japan and China both claim sovereignty over a group of Japanese-controlled islets in the East China Sea, known as the Senkakus in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese. But over the last year, defense hawks in Japan have focused more intently on rising tensions over Taiwan.

Updated 

Dec. 23, 2021, 4:47 p.m. ET

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/business/japan-defense-spending.html