Japan to increase diplomatic staffers by 20% with eye on China

Japan has set a goal of fielding 8,000 diplomatic employees by the end of the decade, about a 20 per cent increase in staff, in part to counter growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

The goal is to bring the scale of diplomatic employees in line with that of Group of Seven members the U.K., France and Germany. They employ between 7,000 and 9,000 staffers each, Nikkei Asia reports.

Japan will still be well behind the U.S., which deploys an army of 30,000 diplomatic employees. China and Russia have 9,000 and 12,000 diplomatic staffers, respectively.

There are 6,604 employees for the Foreign Ministry this fiscal year, according to the ministry. Roughly 1,700 linguists and specialists are among the ranks while between 900 and 1,000 are career-track employees, who are trained in widely spoken languages such as English, Chinese and French, but they are considered to be more generalists than specialists.

The Foreign Ministry will increase the number of midcareer hires along with new graduates, with a particular focus on specialists well versed in a target country. They will be tasked with strengthening ties with those nations.

This year's economic and fiscal policy guideline, finalized June 16, calls for the "fundamental strengthening" of the diplomatic workforce. In April, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party recommended that 8,000 diplomatic staffers be put in place by the early 2030s.

The government will solicit funding for more overseas missions when making budget requests. It is expected that training programs and remote work will be expanded to draw more workers.

Motivated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's economic and military pressure, Japan's diplomatic community will bring in more specialists in cyberwarfare, informational warfare and economic security.

Japan seeks to use diplomacy to increase the number of countries that share values with G7 nations. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called for bolstering diplomatic capabilities.

"Proactive diplomacy should be prioritized," Kishida has said repeatedly.

Japan will allocate more diplomatic staff to the Indo-Pacific region, where China is widening its influence. Japan is building more diplomatic missions in Southeast Asia and in Pacific island countries due to their strategic importance. 

Those personnel will work toward expanding the number of Indo-Pacific nations that see eye-to-eye with Japan concerning the rule of law and other values.

The need to safeguard the growing number of Japanese nationals working overseas has also been cited as a reason to add more staffers.

Japanese companies had about 78,000 locations overseas in 2021, an increase of 16,000 from a decade earlier. There are over 1.3 million Japanese citizens living abroad, although the number has dropped due to the pandemic.

The government will face the challenge of competing with the private sector for highly skilled professionals. The Foreign Ministry has reportedly witnessed a pattern of people working a few years at the ministry before leaving for the private sector.

There have been more than a few cases where the Foreign Ministry has had to cope with staff shortages by recruiting people from other ministries or by bringing in private-sector personnel on a temporary basis.