Japan dispatched a navy patrol plane to monitor a pair of Chinese warships as they approached its territory en route to the Pacific Ocean, its Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
Photographs captured by a P-1 maritime patrol aircraft scrambled from Kanoya, on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, showed the gray hulls of the Chinese navy's Type 054A or Jiangkai II-class frigate the Changzhou and its Type 056 or Jiangdao-class corvette the Luan.
The images were released in a May 7 report by the Joint Staff of Japan's Self-Defense Forces, which said the ships were detected two days earlier while navigating from the East China Sea into the Philippine Sea.
Japan's military is already among the best equipped in the world, but U.S. officials have praised the security treaty ally's decision to rearm and step up joint training for regional contingencies at a time when leaders in both countries say China's geopolitical ambitions—backed by its rapidly expanding hard power—could end America's leadership of the existing international order.
Tokyo, although still limited by the provisions in its post-war constitution, is leaning into its decades-long alliance with Washington to secure its expansive maritime borders against the territorial claims of neighboring China, as well as the unpredictable alliance of authoritarian leaders in Russia and North Korea across its northern seas.
Japan's Joint Staff, which publishes regular reports of Russian and Chinese ship movements near its territory, said its forces first sighted the naval vessels Changzhou and Luan 25 miles south of the Kusagaki Islands. The pair sailed eastward through the Osumi Strait into the Pacific Ocean, it said.
Newsweek's map, created using the Japanese government's geospatial data, shows the approximate paths traveled by China's ships, shown against the limits of Japan's claimed territorial waters—typically 12 nautical miles from the coast.
The Osumi Strait was one of several strategic waterways used by Russia and China's navies in the past 12 months as they threaded the so-called first island chain, a U.S. defense concept that envisions multiple maritime choke points in wartime.
Newsweek's analysis of more than 130 Joint Staff reports illustrated numerous locations where Japan intercepted Russian and Chinese military vessels in the fiscal year 2023.
The two navies made frequent use of the Osumi Strait but also traveled regularly through the Tsugaru Strait in the north and the Tsushima Strait in the south, as well as the Miyako Strait in the southwest near Okinawa, home to roughly two-thirds of the American troops stationed in Japan.
Also in the last fiscal year, Japan said it scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets against mostly Russian and Chinese aircraft 669 times, its Joint Staff said.
Newsweek's map of the sorties showed the Japanese islands enveloped from three sides.
The Chinese and Russian defense ministries did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the frequent operations around Japan.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
