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Despite Japan's escalated maritime disputes with China, discussion about "military threats from China" in Japan is indeed exaggerated, Japan's former defense minister said on Monday.

"There is no need for us to keep stressing that China is a threat. The China-threat theory in Japan has turgidly stirred unease among the people," Shigeru Ishiba said when talking with diplomats and scholars from China and Japan on diplomatic and security affairs at the Beijing-Tokyo Forum.

Japanese scholars attending the forum, however, were still extremely concerned about China's naval development.

"China insists on self-defense, but the stance of its military is more and more aggressive," said Masashi Nishihara, director of Japan's Research Institute for Peace and Security.

A series of Chinese naval exercises this year have shown a different stance, he said, warning that the US has been more and more active in containing the Chinese navy based on Washington's joint military actions with Seoul and Hanoi this summer.

The US has conducted condensed military drills with the Republic of Korea and Vietnam in the neighborhood of China since July and vowed to remain in the South China Sea where China has overlapped territorial disputes with some countries.

Media reports have linked China's military exercises to its discontent with the US moves.

Chen Jian, former Chinese ambassador to Japan, said Japan's views on the Chinese military have long been disturbed by the Cold War thinking pattern.

"Some of our problems are due to lack of confidence and mutual trust," Chen said. "We both have our own advantages and there is no need to be overly concerned."

Liu Jiangyong, a senior scholar on Japanese studies with Tsinghua University, said China would not choose to expand across the world as the US and the former Soviet Union did.

He, however, warned of the shift of Japan's military attention to the Southwest toward China. Japan's National Defense Program Outline, scheduled to be finished this year, is highly dangerous, Liu said.

"That will draw China's unease toward Japan," he said. "This is the first such revision of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and I hope they do not choose the wrong direction."

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（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）

Todd Balazovic is a reporter for the Metro Section of China Daily. Born in Mineapolis Minnesota in the US, he graduated from Central Michigan University and has worked for the China daily for one year.