![]() Emily Wang/APĪt one point, about 200 Japanese people lived in the islands, further cementing Tokyo’s claims, and China did not challenge Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus for 75 years, it says. Japanese Coast Guard vessels, rear and right, sail alongside a Japanese activists' fishing boat, center with a flag, near a group of disputed islands called Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan, in August 2013. ![]() Japan’s Foreign Ministry website says in 1895 the chain was incorporated into Japanese territory after the government “carefully ascertained that there had been no trace of control over the Senkaku Islands by another state prior to that period.” Tokyo says its claims to the islands are rooted in history. The islands “have potential oil and natural gas reserves, are near prominent shipping routes, and are surrounded by rich fishing areas,” it says. To present an international legal claim to the islands over Japan, “China simply needs to establish a greater and more enduring presence of its ships in the waters around the islands,” he said.Īlthough the islands are uninhabited, there are economic interests involved, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The record amounts of time Chinese vessels are spending near the Senkakus make another statement, Brown said. “Sending its frigate to monitor the activity of the Russian ship could be interpreted as one such symbol of control,” Brown said. “Beijing’s goal is to establish and demonstrate effective control over the Senkaku Islands” and it needs symbols of that control, said James Brown, an associate professor of political science at Temple University in Tokyo. Foreign warships are allowed into those waters – so the Chinese navy hasn’t broken any international agreements – and China’s Foreign Ministry told CNN earlier this year that the Chinese Coast Guard’s patrols in the waters surrounding the islands were “an appropriate exercise of China’s sovereign right.”Ĭhina attempted to demonstrate that right on Monday when it warned a frigate from the Russian Navy to leave the very same waters, a Japanese official said. Now Beijing may be slowly peeling back the onion in another disputed island chain, the rocky, uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, administered by Japan and known as the Diaoyus in China.Ĭhinese Coast Guard and even naval ships have been spending record amounts of time in the waters around the Senkakus this year, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.Įarlier this week, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) frigate entered the waters in the contiguous zone around the Senkakus for only the fourth time since 2016, Japanese officials said.Ī contiguous zone covers waters between islands that do not fall into the 12-nautical-mile limit of a nation’s territorial waters. ![]() The islands – with names like Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef – are essentially People’s Liberation Army bases. Those militarized islands are also claimed in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, but none of those places are likely to see their claims realized. “Relevant construction activities that China is undertaking in the Nansha (Spratly) islands do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarization,” Xi told former US President Barack Obama at the White House in 2015. Think of how Beijing built up islands in the South China Sea and then fortified them, eventually establishing what the former head of the US Pacific Command in 2018 called a “Great Wall of SAMs,” – surface-to-air missiles – on islands that years earlier Chinese leader Xi Jinping had pledged not to militarize. For all the speculation of quick military action by China to achieve its foreign policy goals, Beijing’s track record has been more akin to peeling an onion, slowly and deliberately pulling back layers to reach a goal at the center.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |