The longest stay is nearly 58 hours
Japanese broadcaster NHK reported Tuesday that Chinese government ships sailed into the “adjacent area” of The Diaoyutai Islets (the Senkaku islands) for a record three to three days in 2002. The time spent in its territorial waters, from October 11 to 13 last year, was the longest ever recorded.
The adjacent area is also called the contiguous zone. According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the zone is 12 knots (about 22 kilometres) long. According to Japan’s coast guard, Chinese government ships sailed into the “territorial waters” of The Islands 24 times last year, a total of 78. Both the number of ships and the number of ships were lower than the year before. However, the number of days of driving into the adjacent area was significantly higher than the 228 days of the previous year. From April to August last year, there was one day in which Chinese government vessels visited the adjacent area every day, marking the longest consecutive sailing days since The Japanese government nationalized the Diaoyutai islands in September 2012 by “purchasing” the islands.
Japan will add eight large patrol ships
In response, in order to strengthen the security mechanism, hai Bao decided to add eight large patrol vessels between this year and 2003. Aoshima Takahashi, head of the Ministry of Marine Conservation, told a news conference in December that the situation was still “unpredictably dire” as China’s government ships moved towards larger and more militarised vessels. In territorial waters, Japan wants to be fully prepared.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that analysts believe Beijing, through its military, coast guard and even civilian means, has continued to increase its presence in the offshore and airspace of the islands in recent years. This strategy was designed to wear down Japan’s will to resist over time, and now it seems to be working. China’s People’s Liberation Army has flown hundreds of sorties near diaoyutai island, forcing Japan’s Air Self-defense Force to scramble fighter jets from morning until night to intercept them. Timothy Heath, an expert at the RAND Corporation, an American think-tank, admits that China’s navy and coast guard ships have vast resources, and that the ultimate strategy is to get Japan to acquiesce without war.
The sense of frequency brush presence sapped Japan’s will
In 2008, Haibao began to report the number of times that Chinese coast guard ships sailed near the Diaoyutai islands, less than 10 times a year. But after the Japanese government announced its “nationalization,” a total of 428 Chinese coast guard ships sailed into its adjacent area between September 2012 and the end of that year. An average of 720, 000 ships a year from 1313 to 1808. Last year there were more than one hundred fifteen or seven.
In December, Japan’s deputy defense minister, Taisu Nakayatsu, referred to China’s increasing activities in the waters around Japan as a threat. The United States, Japan and France plan to hold their first joint military exercise in May on one of Japan’s outer islands. According to Derek Grossman, another RAND expert, pressure from Chinese military aircraft has severely strained the air force’s ability to maintain normal operations.
If the United States and Japan respond to increased Chinese pressure by increasing cooperation near the Diaoyutai islands, raising the risk of a crisis or conflict that neither side wants, Then Beijing’s strategy could fail and make China’s overall security situation more unstable, Heath said.
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