Japan is drawing up a new 10-year plan to improve the maritime capabilities of four nations in Southeast Asia that are struggling to resist growing encroachment into their territorial waters by China.
Tokyo has previously delivered maritime equipment to a number of countries in the region under one-off arrangements, but the new initiative is designed to provide sustained and evolving assistance over a period of a decade, according to an official of the National Institute of Defence Studies (NIDS), a think tank affiliated with Japan’s Ministry of Defence.
The assistance is to be provided to…
