Chinanews, Beijing, Feb. 10 – Japan thinks it is superior to others in its technology of making submarine manufacturing materials and it seems that Japan also pays close attention to the technological development of its neighboring country in this aspect. On Tuesday, some Japanese media reported about a former technical official from the Japanese Ministry of Defense being sued on charges that he was suspected of providing information to China about Japan’s submarine making materials. A Chinese military expert recently pointed out that such allegation was "groundless". It only indicated that Japanese media and some Japanese were still harping on the same old tune of "China threat" view, the Global Times reported.
Li Daguang, a military expert from the National Defense University, said that some Japanese media had purposely played up the groundless news to spread the view of "China threat." They did it obviously out of political motives. In fact, China’s submarine technology has reached a certain level and there is no need for China to obtain Japanese submarine steel through unjust means. More importantly, Chinese government has always adhered to an offshore defense strategy only to its offshore water areas, confining its defense scope to within 12 nautical miles of its territorial sea and shallow sea area of the special economic zones within 200 nautical miles. Therefore there is no need for China to obtain any materials used for making submarines used in deep ocean zones. However, in its report, the Daily Yomiuri mentioned a kind of steel material that has a high tension and can sustain high pressure. Such kind of steel is often used for making bathyscaphes. Since China has not need for such steel material, why should China bother to buy any information about such steel from Japanese?
An insider of Chinese shipbuilding industry said that China has set up a relatively complete system in its technologies of making submarines, from product design, to manufacturing materials, to product making. This of course includes the special steel used for making submarines. It doesn’t make any sense at all for Japan to say that China “has stolen” their submarine making information.
