The Chinese state-owned company is said to have shown interest in Japan’s outpost

A Chinese state-owned company reportedly offered financing to a Japanese executive in 2019 as the central government negotiated the purchase of a desert island from his company to build a base for the Self-Defense Forces.

Isao Tateishi, the representative director of Taston Airport, was offered possible loans and investments when he was invited to Shanghai by the Chinese company in September 2019, according to sources and a video recording of Tateishi’s comments.

At the time, Tokyo-based Taston Airport owned 99 percent of Mageshima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, a strategic national security outpost in southwestern Japan against an increasingly assertive China.

However, negotiations on the island with the Ministry of Defense had stalled over the sales price and the company was experiencing financing problems.

A senior official from the Chinese company met with Tateishi in Tokyo shortly after the Shanghai meeting.

Yoshitaka Sakurada, former minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympics, apparently attended the meeting.

The Asahi Shimbun has obtained a photo believed to have been taken at the time.

In an interview, Sakurada said he is in the photo.

“I was probably (at the meeting),” he said. “I don’t remember who invited me, but I should have been more careful. I have no idea who the people on the other side are.”

Tateishi died in 2021 at the age of 88.

The Chinese company did not respond to The Asahi Shimbun’s written request for comment.

In November 2019, the government agreed in principle to buy Mageshima from Taston Airport for about 16 billion yen ($103 million).

Construction of an SDF base there began in January 2023.

Mageshima had previously been listed as a candidate location for landing practices for US aircraft in a 2011 agreement between Japan and the US.