‘Blatant hypocrisy’: Why China is being criticised over its opposition to Australia buying stealthy Japanese submarines

Beijing has been accused of “blatant hypocrisy” after China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Australia should not go ahead with a deal to buy submarines from Japan out of “consideration of the feelings of Asian countries” over the second world war.

Wang was speaking to reporters in Beijing on Wednesday during a joint briefing with Julie Bishop, his Australian counterpart.

“We hope that in military cooperation with Japan, Australia will take into full account this historical context and take into consideration the feelings of Asian countries because of that history,” Wang said.

“We hope that Australia will take concrete actions to support the peaceful development of Japan and Japan’s efforts to uphold its pacifist constitution, and not the opposite.”

Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University said: “It’s blatant hypocrisy to suggest that Japan or Australia are in some way upsetting the balance in the region, particularly given that he was speaking on the same day that anti-aircraft missiles were spotted on one of the islands in the South China Sea that Beijing has seized.”