Two Japanese men killed in northeast China after business dispute
TOKYO/BEIJING--China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that two Japanese men killed last month in the northeastern city of Dalian were business partners of the suspect and authorities were investigating.
Dalian police confirmed the case in a statement on Tuesday and said a 42-year-old male suspect of Chinese nationality has been arrested. He had lived in Japan for a long time, the statement said.
The two victims were business partners of the suspect who had entered China temporarily, police said, adding that the incident was triggered due to business conflicts.
The Japanese government is "providing necessary support to the victims' families and will continue to respond appropriately from the perspective of protecting Japanese nationals," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi.
Chinese police notified the Japanese consulate in Shenyang on May 25 about the killings, two days after the incident, Hayashi, Japan's top government spokesperson, told a regular briefing.
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They're also trying to demonstrate that they're a rising power that's challenging the United States and Western nations like Japan in their capability to cast global doubt on our leadership and our long-term trajectory of power. Q: How do you assess the capabilities of China's large warships and fighter jets? A: China is definitely increasing the numbers of its warships and weapons, but the United States and Japan still hold the edge in capability. The capabilities of modern weapons that countries like the United States and Japan possess, such as the Aegis Weapon System, the F-35 stealth fighters and the SM-2 and SM-3 surface-to-air missiles, exceed those of Chinese weapons. There have been 170-plus attacks (from Yemen's Houthi rebels) using drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against U.S. Navy forces in the Red Sea in the last 20 months, and we've defeated all of them using our missiles and electronic warfare systems. 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Their current strategy is to erode everything around Taiwan, the diplomatic environment, the economic environment and the military environment, in a way in which the international community just becomes inured and everybody will accept that's the way things are. That's a very dangerous place to be. The coercion and force piece relates to the fact that China continues to repeat that they are not taking force off the table. We have to take them at their word. Q: Japan plans to raise its defense spending to 2 percent of its gross domestic product by fiscal 2027, but concerns remain about an escalating arms race. Can't we restrain China's high-handed behavior without increasing our defense outlays? A: I do not think that we can reverse the erosion of our conventional deterrent without increasing our defense budgets. It's not a decision that we take lightly, but we're going to have to invest to restore our deterrent. China has deployed many warships and numbers do matter. 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