Tokyo said four Chinese government ships entered contested waters around a group of Japanese-held islands on Wednesday, in a continuation of their long-running dispute in the East China Sea.
Japan's coast guard said the Chinese coast guard vessels sailed in the territorial waters off one of the Senkaku islands for about two hours before departing, according to a statement carried by the Japanese news agency Jiji Press.
The uninhabited islets are under Japanese administration but claimed by China under the name Diaoyu. Taiwan is also a claimant—it calls them Diaoyutai—although it rarely asserts its claim with force.
In a brief notice posted earlier on Wednesday, China's coast guard said one of its flotillas conducted a patrol "in the territorial sea" of the islets in a move to defend the country's sovereign rights.
The Senkakus have a tiny footprint—the largest of the features is about 1.5 square miles—but they are located in strategic waters in the first island chain, separating China's maritime forces from the expansive Western Pacific.
The United States takes no position on sovereignty over the Senkakus, but it does recognize Japan's de facto control over them. Under the U.S.-Japan security treaty, Washington is obliged to commit American forces to their defense upon Tokyo's request.
The latest patrol—the first time in six weeks Chinese coast guard vessels had entered Japan's declared territorial waters around the islets—was consistent with years of similar activity, according to Tokyo.
Monthly data published by Japan's Foreign Ministry shows a spike in intrusions in the Senkakus since the fall of 2012, when Tokyo nationalized the features.
"Since then, China has been using this as an excuse to send the coast guard and other agencies' ships into Japan's contiguous zone almost every day except for stormy weather days, and these ships intrude into Japanese territorial waters several times a month," its website says.
Japan says China's moves "to challenge the status quo using force and coercion" began at least four years earlier, however, with the sending of Chinese government vessels into the area.
Four Chinese coast guard vessels were detected in the territorial waters around the Senkakus in February, and six in January, according to the ministry's data.
In the adjacent 24-nautical mile contiguous zone around the islets, however, Japan's coast guard counted 114 Chinese vessels in February and 117 in January—both consistent with monthly highs going back at least five years.
"These patrols appear to many to be an attempt to exploit the U.S. distinction between sovereignty and administrative control by demonstrating that Beijing has a degree of administrative control over the islands," Asian affairs specialist Mark Manyin wrote in a 2021 report for the Congressional Research Service.
"Since 2019, China has gradually expanded and intensified its activities in and around the Senkakus, establishing a near-daily presence in Japanese-declared territorial and contiguous waters around the islands, including blocking Japanese fishing vessels."
In opening remarks prepared for the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Adm. John Aquilino, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said the Chinese coast guard activity, as well as other related maneuvers, "clearly illustrate an attempt to change the existing international order in its favor."
China's coast guard has no publicly available contact information. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.
Japan's embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
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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
