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By Park Min-hee, Beijing correspondent

The dispute over the Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyudao Islands in China) has now reached the point where both China and Japan are planning military exercises in preparation for war. Both countries are also preparing countermeasures, including the firing of flares over sovereign airspace, as tension between the two countries escalates.

The General Staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army has this year issued a nationwide order to the entire military asking them to focus on exercises to prepare for the possibility of war, reported the Peoples Liberation Army Daily, the military’s newspaper, on Jan. 14.

Experts are interpreting the order as intending to put pressure on the Japanese over the Senkaku dispute. This year’s order contains ten references to war and conflict, while last year’s order had no such references. China is has strengthened its position on territorial disputes since leader Xi Jinping took over.　

Tension over the Senkaku Islands is escalating but experts don’t expect the dispute to develop into armed conflict between China and Japan. China is showing its willingness to wage war but its priority is pressing Japan to come to the negotiation table and thus acknowledge that the Senkaku Islands are a disputed region.

Opinion is also growing that a war with Japan could occur because of greater Chinese confidence in its national power. In an editorial, titled “How should we look on a war after thirty years of peace?” the state-run nationalist daily the Global Times wrote, “Countries responding to the rise of China by banding together to suppress it are playing a dangerous game on the fringes of war. If China were to back off it would suffer strategic damage.” It added that China would not hesitate to retaliate militarily if external pressure was to go beyond the manageable levels.

Shanghai University of Political Science and Law professor and military expert Ni Lexiong was quoted in the Ming Pao newspaper, “The General Staff’s orders are aimed at those Japanese voices calling for war. China seeks to develop peacefully but half of these goals are determined by China and half by the regional environment.”

Japan is also preparing firm countermeasures. Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said in a Jan. 15 press conference, “We are preparing an immediate response according to international criteria, if Chinese aircraft violate our national airspace around Senkaku.”

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that in the event of Chinese aircraft ignoring radio warnings and entering Japanese airspace, flares would be fired in response. On Jan. 13 at the Narashino training ground near Tokyo, Japanese ground defense forces were ordered to conduct extensive training exercises to practice for the possibility of retaking an island that had been lost to an enemy.

On Jan. 10th, ten Chinese aircraft including fighters were confronted by scrambled Japanese fighters as they approached the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) near the islands.

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