Japan denounces new incursion of Chinese ships into its territorial waters

Japanese Maritime Security Service Reported Incursion of Chinese Ships into Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands, East China Sea, about the Eighth incursion of these boats in disputed waters in 2021.

Two of the four chinese ships sighted in the region have entered the territorial sea and remain there. One of them has a cannon on board.

After learning about the raid, the Director General of the Asia and Oceania Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Takehiro Funakoshi, sent a protest note to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Tokyo.

Repeated incursions occur after a A new law will come into force in China earlier this month, explicitly allowing the regime’s coastguard to use weapons against foreign ships that Beijing says enter its waters illegally..

It’s about 8th time this year Chinese ships enter Japanese waters, according to the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters based in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture.

The focus on the islands intensified soon after the President of the United States, Joe biden, take office and ensure the Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Sugathat your country respect the security treaty commitment to defend the islands under Japanese control. The conversation took place as the US president voiced his initial opposition to Chinese land claims in a series of appeals to Asian allies last month.

China, which in turn has protested against what it calls illegal movements of Japanese ships near the islands, appears use the escalation of your coast guard activities in the waters as a way to challenge Japanese actions.

Since the 1970s, Tokyo and Beijing have had a dispute in the East China Sea over the Senkaku Islands, as they are called in Japan, or Diaoyu, according to their Chinese name. In 2020, according to the Japanese government, regime ships carried out 333 raids in nearby waters.

Japan claims the five islands have been part of its territory since 1895 and that before they did not belong to anyone, but Beijing maintains that on Japanese maps of 1783 and 1785, the archipelago is identified as Chinese territory and that it had belonged to the Chinese Empire 600 years ago.

The government of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, created a digital museum at the beginning of last December which, according to him, “helps viewers better understand the undisputed fact“That the uninhabited islands are part of Chinese territory. The Japanese government protested against the unusual measure.

“Every day they try to enter our territorial waters. In August, a boat stayed 57 hours and chased our fishermenJapanese Congressman Yasuhide Nakayama said last year.

Tokyo attributes the regime’s claims to discovery in the archipelago of significant hydrocarbon reserves in the area in the 1970s, with an extension of just six square kilometers, which remained under US control after WWII, and which ended with the transfer of Washington to Japan in 1972.

(With information from Europa Press)

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