China has lashed out at Japan over an official defence report by Tokyo, calling it untruthful and wrongly labelling Beijing a threat, state media reported on Friday.
The new Japanese defence white paper is the first since a long-simmering dispute with China and Taiwan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea heated up last year.
It “deliberately ignores facts and plays up ‘China’s military threat’”, the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng as saying.
The document, approved by Tokyo on Tuesday, is an annual report on Japan’s defence capabilities and regional security.
It rebuked Beijing for behaviour Tokyo said could trigger an incident.
“China... has taken action described as coercive, which includes risky behaviour,” the report said.
Examples included intrusions into Japan’s territorial waters and violation of airspace “and even dangerous actions that could cause a contingency”, it said.