Two Chinese coastguard ships – including one armed with an ‘auto cannon’ – entered Japan’s territorial waters for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, plaguing a Japanese fishing vessel, according to reports from Tokyo.
The Chinese government vessels on Monday joined two other China Coast Guard ships that entered and stayed in the adjacent area adjacent to the waters of the Senkaku Islands controlled by Japan. Japan Times.
The energy-rich Senkakus in the East China Sea is uninhabited, but is also claimed by the governments of China and Taiwan, which refer to them as the Diaoyu and Diaoyutai Islands, respectively.
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters on Tuesday that a fishing vessel operating from one of the islands, Taisho, had been “pursued” by the few invading ships alerted by Japanese coastguard patrol vessels.
According to Kyodo News, the Japanese maritime authorities said that all four Chinese vessels left the territorial waters late on Tuesday morning, while the armed coastguard showed no intention of using its weapon – which is described as an ‘auto cannon’.
Chinese coastguard ships sailed near the waters around the Senka coast for 333 days last year, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said, setting a new maritime record for so-called “gray-zone” tactics in Beijing in the region.
The attack on Tuesday was the seventh operation in Japanese territorial waters in 2021, as well as the first by an armed vessel since Beijing imposed its controversial law on the Coast Guard on February 1.
The provisions of the new legislation allow China Coast Guard vessels to take “all necessary measures” – including the use of force – to stop foreign vessels operating in Chinese territorial waters.
Given Beijing’s major maritime claims in the Eastern and South China Sea, regional neighbors such as Japan and the Philippines have expressed concern about how Chinese maritime powers could enforce domestic law.
It also led to the Coast Guard being nicknamed China’s “second fleet”.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Katsunobu said Tokyo had submitted formal protests to Beijing on Monday and Tuesday.
“Regardless of what they wear, it is unacceptable for these Chinese coastguard ships to penetrate Japan’s territorial waters,” NHK quoted him as saying.
Last week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry defended the country’s coastguard operations after government vessels were spotted in Japanese waters near the Senkakus on February 6 and 7.
Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin described the Senkakus as “China’s inherent territory”, calling coastguard activity “legal and legitimate measures to protect sovereignty.”
Another defense was presented by Yan Yan, director of the Research Center of Oceans Law and Policy at the National Institute of South Chinese Marine Studies, headquartered in the southern province of Hainan in China.
Write in the newspaper the Nationalist Communist Party Global Times, Yan said that concerns about Beijing’s coastguard law were part of a campaign to “lubricate” China.
“Chinese maritime enforcement authorities have always exercised benevolence and self-control while conducting maritime operations and will not violate the principle of necessity and proportionality,” Yan wrote.
Toshi Yoshihara, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said China wants to gain control of the Senkakus to impede U.S. 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 halt US military operations,” he told the Tokyo newspaper. Sankei Shimbun and his English arm Japan Forward.
“China has a penchant for using domestic laws to advance its external territorial claims,” Yoshihara said. “This was true in the 1992 law on the territorial sea and adjoining zone, including Beijing’s claims on various islands and atolls as well as the Senkaku Islands. This was also true in the 2005 legislation against the Separation Act which legitimize. to seize Taiwan. ‘
Yoshihara said Tokyo needed “substantial countermeasures” to repel any Chinese strategy to take over the Senkaku Islands.
China Coast Guard