Beijing’s “grey zone” aggressiveness targeted the important “first island chain” islands.
Tokyo Earlier this year, Tomomi Inada was ordered to look out of a porthole when she was startled out of her berth in a ruckus on a Japanese survey vessel. When the lights of a Chinese coast guard ship pounced on her skiff, the seasoned Japanese politician from the ruling party was taken aback.
The Coast Guard ship sounded alerts in Chinese, Japanese, and English through its loudspeaker: “Get out!” declared Inada’s vessel when it entered Chinese territory.
Inada, a hawkish former defence minister, told reporters in Tokyo, “I was very angry to hear this,” a few weeks after leading a group of five conservative politicians on an unusual visit to the Senkaku islands, a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea that China claims is part of Japan. Four members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Inada and one member of the Japan Innovation Party made the trip in April, which was the first known visit by Japanese lawmakers to that region since 2013.
Inada and her group had an exciting night in the midst of growing tensions in East Asian waters. Experts are speaking out as Beijing exercises its maritime might in the area and Washington and its allies follow suit.
The Japanese government does not permit politicians to set foot on the islets owing to political sensitivities, therefore the Chinese presence did not stop the lawmakers from sailing close to the islets. However, the Chinese were able to block the frequencies of some surveillance drones.
Analysts view China’s aggression as staying in a “grey zone” that does not lead to direct war; nonetheless, the recent Senkakus episode is only one facet of a three-pronged maritime menace that is unsettling Beijing’s neighbours. At the moment, the Senkakus, Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, and Scarborough Shoal in the Philippines are the targets of the increased animosity.
China claims all three of the island groups. The three sites are all part of the so-called “First island chain,” which is a collection of islands that includes Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. China views this group of islands as its first line of defence and is the first significant Pacific archipelago off the coast of East Asia’s continental peninsula.
For many years, Tokyo and Beijing have been at odds over the Senkakus, often referred to as the Diaoyu Islands in China. According to Japan’s Foreign Ministry, there is no question of territorial sovereignty because they are “an inherent part of the territory of Japan”. China claims that the islands are part of its natural territory.
Tokyo has increased its own patrols as a result of China’s consistent influx of coast guard vessels into Japanese territorial seas and the contiguous zone surrounding the Senkaku Islands, according to statistics from the Japan Coast Guard. According to Japanese data, a total of 1,287 Chinese vessels were active in the contiguous zone on 352 days in 2023.
Japan reported last month that it has seen Chinese ships in the vicinity of the islands for an unprecedented number of days in a row.
Last month, Inada told reporters in Tokyo, “It is important to ensure that the situation in the East China Sea does not become like the situation in the South China Sea.” Consider the worst-case situation while making decisions, and make sure the government is able to
Inada emphasised that she was not anti-Chinese, but she also discussed the necessity of cooperating with “like-minded” nations like the United States and the Philippines to stop Beijing from forcibly altering the status quo.
In a another incident that happened in April, a China Coast Guard ship fired water cannons at a ship transporting supplies to Filipino fisherman fishing in the waters around Scarborough Shoal. This came after a series of early-morning radio challenges between the two vessels. The reporter was from Nikkei Asia.
The early volleys began at nine in the morning, and the crew, accustomed to the belligerent behaviour of Chinese ships, laughed them off. However, fifty minutes later, the Philippine flag aboard the ship was defiled by a constant stream of water, with one individual with prior experience in these kind of conflicts stating that the spray’s strength was “enough to bend steel.”
The dousing continued for another couple of hours till the Filipino mission leader cried, “Disengage! Let’s take a step back!” There were others who understood the Chinese strategy well: China was there to kill.
In a sign of improved relations between Manila and Washington since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power nearly two years ago, Don McLean Gill, an analyst and lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila, told the Nikkei Asia newspaper that Beijing has “shown a clear position of desire for expansion and disdain for US influence.”
China has been able to “exploit fault lines” within the region in recent decades, Gill said, citing examples such as Tokyo’s past reluctance to play a major role in regional security affairs and Washington’s “preoccupation away from the Western Pacific.” region. Ukraine and the Middle East.
“The ability of countries such as the Philippines, Japan and the United States to press for greater strategic cohesion in the South China Sea has become a major deterrent to China’s expansionist ambitions, given the Philippines’ intention to safeguard the existing order,” Gill said.
Some Chinese commentators say the growing tensions in the three regions are the result of constant provocations by the United States to expand its military influence in the region.
The United States “exaggerates events” out of fear that relations between China and the United States will deteriorate. Naval and air confrontations will get out of control, but they are also out of political and diplomatic considerations in the hope of using public opinion and diplomacy to pressure or speed up the situation and influence it, according to a March report. US military activities in the South China Sea by the Beijing-based think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Exploration Initiative.
At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, China’s new defense minister Dong Jun criticized the Philippines, saying “a certain country violated bilateral agreements and promises and deliberately carried out provocative actions with the encouragement of external forces.”
But he strongly criticized Taiwan’s ruling pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive Party and accused it of seeking to “erode Taiwan’s Chinese identity” and “separation in a gradual manner.”
Days after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te was sworn in at the end of May, China carried out two days of “punitive” military exercises around the democratic island. Communist China has never controlled Taiwan but claims it belongs to it and denies occupying it by force.
Beijing described Lai as a “separatist” and criticized his inaugural speech, in which he urged China to stop its acts of repression and aggression. Lai’s center-left Democratic Progressive Party supports an alliance with major democracies rather than China.
Fears are growing of an accident that could lead to a dangerous situation. In February, Chinese officers boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat in the area for inspection. Beijing has since announced it would strengthen maritime law enforcement and step up routine patrols around Kinmen and Xiamen, the Chinese cities opposite the islands.
It represents a departure from the status quo that has prevailed since the 1990s, when the Taiwanese government designated “no-go waters” near Kinmen and the Matsu islands. For decades, Chinese and Taiwanese coast guard vessels have generally maintained their sides of the border.
According to John Dotson, deputy director of the Global Taiwan Institute and a former US Navy officer, China’s increasing assertiveness around Taiwan’s offshore islands, particularly Kinmen, should be seen as part of a larger picture of more aggressive behavior throughout the region.
“The incidents around Kinmen that began in February, which involved fishing boats and coast guard units, show how the PRC will use ‘opportunistic crises’ in an effort to further undermine Taiwan’s genuine territorial sovereignty,” Dotson told Nikkei Asia. “But it also fits into a broader pattern, which is linked to the PRC’s pressure on the Philippines at Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal.”
“In the near term, the risk of a major crisis is low, but this risk will continue to grow over time,” Dotson said.
Colin Koh, a senior fellow at the College of S.C. Rajaratnam International Studies in Singapore who specializes in Indo-Pacific maritime affairs and maritime security, says China has become increasingly aggressive since Xi Jinping came to power 12 years ago.
“Many countries around the South China Sea, as well as Japan, are trying to avoid Beijing’s strategy that is highly likely to entice them to do things that could provoke a major response,” Koh said. “These countries are also trying to avoid an accidental clash that could escalate Chinese tensions by using this as an excuse,” he added.
“The situation is stable and unpredictable. It is stable because no one is thinking about the idea of going to war, but it is unpredictable because you would only need a spark, and then you would have an uncontrollable fire.”
Speaking on a television news program after returning from the Senkaku Islands, Inada, now acting secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, expressed his view on what his government’s strategy should be: “Japan should calmly do what needs to be done.” “It has to do it,” he said without hesitation.
