TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — If Japan attacks China with the missiles it plans to deploy on a small island near Taiwan, Beijing will destroy Japan's military, a hawkish Chinese commentator said Thursday (Aug. 5).

Hu Xijin (胡錫進) serves as the editor-in-chief of the state-owned Global Times tabloid and is known for targeting critics of China’s communist regime with harsh statements.

Japanese media reports said the military planned to deploy missiles and more than 500 troops on Ishigaki, a small island in Okinawa just 300 kilometers east of Taiwan. Their main purpose is to monitor Chinese naval activity in the area and to counter a Chinese attack.

Hu said the plan amounted to Japan “carrying the ammunition” for the United States to bomb China, UDN reported. In the event of a cross-strait war and Japan intervening, Ishigaki and the small islands nearby would immediately be at the receiving end of a massive attack, Hu warned.

Military bases in Japan would not be safe either, the writer said. He also named the types of missiles China could use to take revenge for more than a century of Japanese actions since 1895, when their first war ended with the loss of Taiwan to Japan.

Commenting on the U.S. decision to sell 40 M109A6 self-propelled howitzers to Taiwan, Hu claimed they would be useless as China would saturate Taiwan's military installations with attacks, so there would be no place for the weapons to be used. Any U.S. military equipment would be destroyed or fall into the hands of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Hu wrote.