China Checking

An interesting article from The Economist especially since the U.S. Pacific Command tweeted about it - Small reefs, big problems: Asian coastguards are in the front line of the struggle to check China

China’s neighbours are unnerved by its rapid increase in defence spending, in particular its pursuit of a blue-water navy. They note a Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who is not shy about flexing Chinese muscle. He likes to talk of China’s “peaceful rise” and of a “new type of great-power relationship”—one that appears to leave little space for small countries.

In both Beijing and Washington, strategists have long liked to grapple with whether America and China are destined to fall into a “Thucydides trap”. In the original, the Spartans’ fear of the growing might of Athens made war inevitable. The modern parallel states that an existing power (America) is bound to clash with a rising one (China). In Japan the point is made differently: at sea modern China is behaving with the paranoid aggression of imperial Japan on land before the second world war. “They are making the same mistakes that we did,” says a Japanese official.

China: All Your (East and Southeast Asia) Seas Belong to the PRC

Defense News Reports "General Says Chinese Patrols In Asian Seas 'Legitimate' ":

“Why are Chinese warships patrolling in East China Sea and South China Sea? I think we are all clear about this,” Qi told the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore.

“Our attitude on East China Sea and South China Sea is that they are in our Chinese sovereignty. We are very clear about that,” he said through an interpreter.

“So the Chinese warships and the patrolling activities are totally legitimate and uncontroversial.”

I guess they are "uncontroversial" to him and to his friends - in the PRC.

I can only believe the Philippines, Japan and a few other concerned residents of the area feel differently.


Hat tip: USNI News Room.

Japan's East China Sea Response to China: A new base near the dispute

China and Japan are engaged in a dispute over some islands in the East China Sea (see here and here).

China has sent fleets of fishing vessels and aircraft and ships of its "State Oceanic Administration" to the area.

Japan has a response:


UPDATE: It should be note this plan has been in works for a couple of years, as seen here:

***The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has since vowed to beef up defenses for Japan’s “outlying islands,” and it appears close to a decision on the small Yonaguni garrison, a plan that has been under discussion for years.***

China's "patrols" of the disputed area have included warships:

A flotilla of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy patrolled waters near the Diaoyu Islands on Monday after returning from a training exercise in the west Pacific.

The patrol marked the first time for China to confirm its naval operations in the waters near the Diaoyu Islands on the very day when the Navy warships conducted such patrol.

The flotilla, consisting of the DDG-136 Hangzhou and DDG-139 Ningbo destroyers, as well as the two frigates FFG-525 Ma'anshan and FFG-529 Zhoushan from the Navy's Donghai Fleet, passed through the Miyako Strait and entered the West Pacific for a routine training exercise on Nov. 28.

After finishing a series of training operations, the flotilla sailed through a strait near the Yonaguni and Iriomote Islands and arrived in waters surrounding the Diaoyu Islands Monday morning.

China: Japan Asserts China Violated Japanese Airspace

ABC News reports Japan Accuses China of Intruding Air Space, Scrambles Fighter Jets.

The disputed islands are in the area of the red arrow. See here.

Eight F-15 fighters were dispatched, according to this:

Japan scrambled eight fighter jets on Thursday after a Chinese state-owned plane breached its airspace for the first time, over islands at the center of a dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.

It was the first incursion by a Chinese state aircraft into Japanese airspace anywhere since the country’s military began monitoring in 1958, the defense ministry said.

The move marks a ramping-up of what observers suggest is a Chinese campaign to create a “new normal”—where its forces come and go as they please around islands which Beijing calls the Diaoyus, but Tokyo controls as the Senkakus.

It also comes as ceremonies mark the 75th anniversary of the start of the Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese Imperial Army troops embarked on an orgy of violence and killing in the then-Chinese capital.

F-15 jets were mobilized after a Chinese Maritime Surveillance aircraft ventured over the islands just after 11 a.m., Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters.

China asserts the islands over which one of its planes flew is "Chinese" airspace, playing the "It's really our territory card":

"The Diaoyu and its affiliated islands are China’s inherent territory since ancient times . . ."

The Chinese have posted pictures of their adventure above the islands here:

The Google translation of that page is:

State Oceanic Administration organized the China Marine Surveillance carry out the Diaoyu Islands, sea and air stereo cruise

Beijing time 10 am, the China Marine Surveillance B-3837 aircraft arrived I Diaoyu Islands airspace rendezvous with China ocean surveillance, 50,46,66,137 boat fleet within the territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands cruise, cruise on the Diaoyu Islands to carry out sea and air stereo. During the China Marine Surveillance formation on the Japanese side activist propaganda solemn statement of the government's position, urged the Japanese side vessel immediately leave China's territorial waters.

Kinda takes the "accuses" part of the ABC headline out of the discussion, since the Chinese have admitted being in and above the islands - the dispute moves to one of those wonderful international law things about whose turf those islands are.
My guess is the "stereo" part refers to the effort being joint between the air and sea units. As reported here, the Chinese already had ships in the territorial waters around the islands:

According to the coast guard's 11th regional headquarters in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, the three ships moved into Japanese waters west of Uotsuri, one of the Senkakus, at around 3:20 p.m. Japan Coast Guard ships warned the three vessels to leave. But crew members on the Chinese ships responded by saying the area 12 nautical miles from Diaoyu constitutes Chinese territorial waters.

Meanwhile, a Chinese fishery patrol ship entered the contiguous zone surrounding the Japanese territorial waters at a point northwest of Kubajima, another of the Senkakus, on Wednesday morning.

Nice historical tie-in. Lots of long memories out there.

Things to Worry About: Japan and China and some islands in the East China Sea

Daniel Blumenthal at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog, on "Why the Japan-China Senkaku dispute is the most explosive issue in Asia":

While the United States affirmed that the U.S.-Japan treaty covers the Senkakus, there still is a disagreement between Washington and Tokyo over who has sovereignty over the islands. This disagreement dates back to the 1970s and is yet another manifestation of the careless and rushed way in which Washington handled its normalization with China.

Arrow indicates disputed area. Sea lanes in purple (from CIA map).

Update: Another effort to show the disputed area

Japan feels isolated, and cannot understand why Washington remains neutral over this sovereignty dispute. Japan has a point. The United States has dined out on a neutral stance -- falling back on apathy toward the outcomes of territorial disputes throughout Asia, as long as they are "resolved peacefully" -- for a long time. This position was reasonable enough when China was weak and unable to press its claims, but those days are over. Is the United States really agnostic about the outcome of territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas? Of course not. It does not want conflict, but neither does it want China to control territories that sit along important sea lanes.

Of course, sea lanes are vital, but as noted here:

East China Sea: War Drum Beats Faintly in the Background

Wall Street Journal video, "Japan Calls for Greater Defense Against China's Military Aggression in the East China Sea":