'It makes no sense': Japanese analysts question China's arrest of four residents on spying charges
Japanese analysts ask whether detention of four residents may be an attempt to divert attention from impending Chinese economic woes
The arrest in China of three Japanese and a North Korean defector living in Japan on charges of spying is a heavy-handed ploy designed to distract public attention from Beijing's looming economic crisis, according to analysts in Japan.
In announcements on September 30 and October 11, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing revealed that it had detained the four, who include a woman in her 50s, since May and that they had been charged with conducting espionage on behalf of Tokyo.
One of the men was detained close to an air base and had apparently taken photos of aircraft through the perimeter fence. The female detainee is reportedly the owner of a language school who had business interests in China and had visited the country frequently.
The Japanese government has denied that the four were working for the country's Public Security Agency and were spying on Chinese interests.
"Beijing has clearly become more sensitive to the activities of foreigners on its soil, but my sense is that these arrests are more of a reflection of the concerns within the Chinese Communist Party over domestic stability," an analyst with close ties to Japan's Ministry of Defence told the .
The analyst, who declined to be named, said the Chinese government's accusations were based on fears that the present economic downturn might be structural rather then merely cyclical and that there was potential for a full-blown financial crisis which could trigger public unrest and calls for political reform.
The Chinese government had, he pointed out, been swift in the past to focus citizens' attentions on perceived external threats at a time when it felt under pressure on domestic issues.
That sentiment was echoed by Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University.
"The present Chinese government has been widely criticised for carrying out cyberespionage against the United States and Japan," said Shimada, pointing to the similarities between the technology incorporated in China's Chengdu J-20 fighter and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.
"The issue was raised when [President] Xi Jinping visited Washington for talks with [Barack] Obama, so now the Chinese want to pretend they are also the victims of espionage by foreign countries," he added.
Shimada expected Beijing to attempt to "extort economic concessions" from Tokyo for the release of the four detainees, although any agreement may never be made public and China may simply release the four suspects.
Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University, said it was "inconceivable" that four "amateur agents" were dispatched with mobile phone cameras to spy on China's massive military machine.
"I have to assume that this has been made up by the Chinese authorities," he said. "What could one person standing outside a military base hope to learn about the secrets of the Chinese military?
"It makes no sense," he added. "Satellites would gather far better images of what is going on inside a military base.
"There's no indication these were anything other than people who were being anything more than curious and, possibly, naive in getting too close to Chinese bases at a time of heightened tensions between the two nations and shortly after Beijing introduced new spying laws," Dujarric said.
The Chinese legislation came into force in November. It incorporates a catch-all clause that cites "any other spying activity".
"It stretches credulity that these four were James Bond-type agents," Dujarric added. "But if I was a Japanese planning a holiday, I'd certainly steer clear of visiting China at the moment."
