It's one of the faster languages... on benchmarks. Sure you can get Java to perform close to C if its written like C, but if you've reached that point, why not just write C code?
This. Java is almost as fast as C++ safer for the average bear, and IMHO easier in the maintenance phase.
I make that last point because I think new people coming into large C++ projects often take longer to ramp up and understand the code than in large Java code bases. But that is purely anecdotal.
