Two Chinese coast guard vessels – including one armed with an “automatic cannon” – entered Japan’s territorial waters for the second consecutive day on Tuesday and harassed a Japanese fishing vessel, according to Tokyo reports.
Chinese government ships joined two other China Coast Guard ships that entered and remained in the contiguous area adjacent to the waters of Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands on Monday, he said. Japan Times.
The energy-rich Senkakus in the East China Sea are uninhabited, but are also claimed by the governments of China and Taiwan, who call them the Diaoyu and Diaoyutai Islands, respectively.
Nobuo Kishi, Japan’s defense minister, told reporters on Tuesday that a fishing vessel operating on one of the islets, Taisho, was “chased” by two invading vessels, who were warned by Coast Guard patrol vessels from Japan.
According to Kyodo News, Japanese maritime authorities said that all four Chinese ships left territorial waters late Tuesday morning, with the armed coast guard ship showing no intention of using its weapon – described as appearing. like an “automatic cannon”.
Chinese coast guard ships sailed near the waters around Senkakus in 333 days last year, said Japanese public broadcaster NHK, setting a new maritime record for Beijing’s so-called “gray zone” tactics in the region.
Tuesday’s raid marked the seventh such operation in Japanese territorial waters in 2021, as well as the first carried out by an armed ship since Beijing enacted its controversial Coast Guard Act on February 1.
The provisions of the new legislation allow China Coast Guard ships to take “all necessary measures” – including the use of force – to prevent foreign ships operating in Chinese territorial waters.
Given Beijing’s vast maritime claims in the eastern and southern seas of China, regional neighbors such as Japan and the Philippines have raised concerns about how Chinese maritime forces could exercise domestic law.
This also led to the coast guard being dubbed China’s “second navy”.
The chief secretary of the Japanese cabinet, Kato Katsunobu, said Tokyo had formal protests against Beijing on Monday and Tuesday.
“Regardless of what they carry, it is unacceptable that these Chinese coast guard ships are intruding into Japan’s territorial waters,” he said, according to NHK.
Last week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry defended the country’s coast guard operations after government ships were spotted in Japanese waters near Senkakus on 6 and 7 February.
The ministry’s spokesman, Wang Wenbin, described the Senkakus as “inherent territory in China”, calling the coast guard activity “legitimate and legal measures to safeguard sovereignty”.
A different defense was offered by Yan Yan, director of the Ocean Law and Policy Research Center at the National Institute for the Study of the South China Sea, based in southern China’s Hainan province.
Writing in the Communist Party nationalist newspaper Global Times, Yan said concerns about the Beijing Coast Guard Act were part of a campaign to “defame” China.
“Chinese maritime authorities have always exercised goodwill and moderation in carrying out maritime operations and will not violate the principle of necessity and proportionality,” wrote Yan.
Toshi Yoshihara, a senior member of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said China was trying to gain control of the Senkakus to obstruct US military operations in the East China Sea.
“Chinese leaders have concluded that if they can gain effective control of the East China Sea, they will be able to prevent US military operations,” he told the Tokyo newspaper Sankei Shimbun and his English-speaking arm Japan Advanced.
“China has a tendency to employ domestic laws to promote its external territorial claims,” said Yoshihara. “This was true in its 1992 Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone Act, under which Beijing advanced claims on several islands and atolls, as well as the Senkaku Islands. It was also true for the 2005 Antisecession Law that legitimizes the use of force apprehend Taiwan. “
Yoshihara said Tokyo needs “substantive countermeasures” to prevent any Chinese strategy from taking over the Senkaku Islands.
China Coast Guard