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| Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe |
The aggressively nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times claims that the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, allegedly admitted that he was preparing for a war with China, criticized the United States and South Korea, and brushed off the controversy over wartime "comfort women" at a media function earlier this month.
Citing weekly Japanese magazine Shukan Gendai, Global Times said Abe made the "shocking" comments at an informal function attended by domestic media heads at an upmarket hotel in Tokyo at the start of the month.
After downing a glass of red wine, Abe is alleged to have kicked off a candid rant by heavily criticizing opposition leader Katsuya Okada from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), slamming the former deputy prime minister for regularly spewing "pointless nonsense," before adding that the DJP is "finished."
Abe is then said to have admitted that his efforts to fully lift Japan's postwar ban on collective self-defense — the right to go to war to support an ally even if Japan is not under direct threat — was indeed aimed at China, with which Japan is engaged in a territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai islands (Senkaku to Japan, Diaoyu to China) in the East China Sea.
Read the full story at Want China Times