Japan Steps Up Security Ties in South East Asia

March 11, 2015 Share Print 0

Seventy years after its imperial forces were kicked out of the South China Sea, Japan is quietly moving back into the region, forging security ties with the Philippines and Vietnam as both Southeast Asian nations try to cope with China’s territorial ambitions.

Tokyo’s security cooperation is broad-based: It is supplying maritime patrol boats to the two countries while Japan will hold its first naval exercises with the Philippines in the coming months. Japanese military doctors are even advising Vietnamese submariners on how to deal with decompression sickness.

Japan is providing this help, and more, in a calibrated escalation of involvement to avoid a backlash from Beijing, said Japanese sources with knowledge of the assistance.

Manila and Hanoi are the two capitals most at odds with Beijing over the South China Sea. Japan itself is embroiled in a bitter row with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, further to the north.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.