Key Points
- Japan is concerned about repeated entries of Chinese Navy ships into or near its territorial waters
- Beijing accused Tokyo of ‘hyping up’ the ‘legitimate’ activities of Chinese warships
Japan’s defence minister, Gen Nakatani, expressed concern on 17 June about repeated entries of Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships into or near Japanese territorial waters in recent weeks.
“The Chinese military has been unilaterally escalating its actions in the waters near our country,” Nakatani told reporters a day after a PLAN spy ship had sailed in an area just outside Japan’s territorial waters near Kitadaito Island in Okinawa Prefecture in the Pacific Ocean.
“The Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) are concerned,” the minister said, stressing that the JSDF will be prepared to firmly protect Japan’s territorial land, waters, and airspace.
The PLAN vessel – identified as a Type 815 Dongdiao-class intelligence ship – entered the Japanese contiguous zone at about 3.05 pm local time on 16 June and left about an hour later, said the MoD. Japan’s Foreign Ministry lodged an expression of concern with the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo over the incident.
Beijing’s reaction to the statement was swift. “We really can’t understand why Japan has repeatedly hyped up Chinese warships’ legitimate activities recently,” said China’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), adding that it was “completely in accordance with relevant principles of international law for Chinese warships to sail through Japan’s adjacent waters during normal navigation on June 16”.
Tokyo said the Chinese intelligence ship was the same one that had entered Japan’s 12 n mile territorial waters west of Kuchinoerabu Island in Kagoshima Prefecture on 15 June, marking the first time a PLAN vessel did so since a Han-class nuclear-powered attack submarine entered the waters off Ishigaki Island in 2004.
China’s MND responded by saying that the ship’s move was in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), given that “Japan’s Tokara Strait is a territorial strait used for international navigation”.
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