Beijing has taken fresh aim at Tokyo’s military build-up, singling out Japan hypersonic weapons development as a particular point of concern. China’s latest criticism focuses on Japan’s plans to test hypersonic weapons in Australia and to arm its submarine drones with long-range missiles, moves that Chinese officials and state-linked analysts argue could shift the regional military balance.
The criticism reflects a broader pattern of Beijing closely tracking, and publicly objecting to, incremental steps in Japan’s military modernization, particularly programs that extend Japan’s strike range or improve its ability to operate in contested waters. Analysts say the specific combination of hypersonic testing and armed submarine drones has drawn extra scrutiny because of what it implies for a potential future conflict scenario involving Taiwan.
How Japan Hypersonic Weapons Plans Threaten PLA Operations
Military analysts say the capabilities under development could threaten People’s Liberation Army amphibious groups and surface combatants operating within what strategists call the first island chain, a series of archipelagos stretching from Japan through Taiwan that forms a key line of Chinese naval projection into the wider Pacific. Long-range missiles mounted on submarine drones would give Japan a harder-to-detect strike option in waters China’s navy currently treats as relatively secure.
Hypersonic weapons, which travel at multiple times the speed of sound and can maneuver during flight, are particularly difficult for existing missile defense systems to intercept, making even a modest arsenal strategically significant. Testing these systems in Australia gives Japan access to the kind of open, monitored ranges needed for realistic trials, something not easily available within Japan’s own more geographically constrained territory, where population density and existing air and maritime traffic leave few corridors suitable for large-scale weapons trials.
Australia’s willingness to host the tests also signals a deepening of security cooperation between Canberra and Tokyo, part of a broader trend of like-minded regional powers pooling military infrastructure and testing resources as they each seek to counterbalance China’s growing naval reach.
Why the First Island Chain Matters So Much
The first island chain has long been central to Chinese military planning, representing the outer boundary Beijing has historically sought to control or at least contest in any conflict scenario involving Taiwan or the broader Pacific. Any development that strengthens a rival power’s ability to operate freely within or near that chain is treated in Beijing as a direct challenge to core strategic interests.
Japanese officials have defended the programs as purely defensive, framing them as a necessary response to China’s own rapid military expansion in the region rather than a provocative escalation. That defensive framing has done little to ease Chinese objections, which have grown more pointed as Japan’s defense spending and capability development have accelerated in recent years, with Tokyo’s military budget climbing to levels unseen since the end of the Second World War.
Tokyo has pointed specifically to China’s rapid expansion of its own submarine fleet and long-range missile programs as justification for its own modernization, arguing that failing to keep pace would leave Japan strategically exposed at a moment when regional tensions, particularly around Taiwan, show little sign of easing.
A Regional Arms Dynamic With No Clear Off-Ramp
Regional security analysts describe the exchange as part of a broader action-reaction cycle playing out across East Asia, where each side’s military modernization is cited by the other as justification for its own further build-up. Breaking that cycle, they say, would require a level of diplomatic trust currently absent from the relationship between Tokyo and Beijing.
Defense analysts in Washington and Canberra say they are watching the reaction from Beijing closely, since the intensity of China’s public objections has often served as a rough gauge of how seriously it views a given capability gap opening up. As the South China Morning Post reported, the dispute over Japan’s weapons programs is likely to remain a recurring flashpoint in the broader strategic competition unfolding across the Indo-Pacific.
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