Kyodo, via Reuters
A Chinese marine surveillance ship cruising next to a Japan Coast Guard patrol ship in the East China Sea in September.
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: November 2, 2012
While Chinese ships have sailed near the islands before, this is the first time since a recent flare-up began that they have plied the waters so consistently. Analysts say that suggests China is trying to wear down Japan’s resolve in the dispute, and possibly even trying to chip away at Japan’s claim of having effective control over the uninhabited islands established in part by its own maritime patrols.
“This is the beginning of a war of patience, a war of attrition,” said Kunihiko Miyake, research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo. “This promises to be a long, long showdown in which China tries not to provoke Japan, but instead to discourage Japan from continuing to try to control those islands.”
The Japanese Coast Guard said that on Friday six Chinese ships — four belonging to a maritime surveillance agency and two fisheries patrol ships — had entered waters claimed by Japan near the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in Chinese. The coast guard said Japanese cutters intercepted the vessels, warning them by radio to leave.
The Chinese ships responded via radio that they were “carrying out valid operations in Chinese waters,” according to the coast guard. It said the Chinese ships stayed for about two hours, coming as close as 14 miles to the largest island, Uotsuri, just outside the 12-mile territorial limit but well within the broader zone of economic control claimed by Japan.
Tensions over the islands intensified in recent months as the Japanese government announced it planned to buy three of the islands still owned by a Japanese citizen. While Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan said he had made the purchase to prevent the islands from falling into the hands of Tokyo’s nationalist governor, China reacted with anger at the move, which it viewed as upsetting an uneasy status quo in which each side had avoided provoking the other.
The Japanese government’s decision touched off angry street demonstrations in China in which Japanese businesses were ransacked and burned, and a continuing informal boycott of Japanese goods has helped depress Japan’s overall trade performance and its gross domestic product numbers. While the Chinese government eventually clamped down on the protests, it has kept up the ship visits. Japan has responded by dispatching dozens of coast guard vessels to waters near the islands, where they are on the lookout for paramilitary ships and fishing boats from China as well as from Taiwan, which also claims the islands.
An economic stimulus package approved by Parliament last week will strengthen the coast guard by speeding up procurement of helicopters and seven more patrol ships.
Such a show of resolve has been uncharacteristic for confrontation-averse Japan, and taken in combination with the latest dispatch of Chinese ships has led some analysts and former diplomats to warn that the current standoff could drag on for some time.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, refused to say how long China would send its ships into waters around the islands. However, he said the Chinese surveillance ships were “completely justified,” describing their maneuvers as “a normal part of their duty” in overseeing China’s sovereign interests.
China also appears to be ratcheting up pressure by broadening its effort to use current and former senior officials to make China’s case to the world. In a speech in Hong Kong this week, Chen Jian, China’s former ambassador to Japan, took aim at the United States, saying its support of its ally Japan was encouraging what he called a return of Japanese militarism.
Other Chinese officials and news media have taken a similar view, blaming a swing in Japan to the nationalist right for the tensions. However, analysts in Tokyo, and some in the United States, say China has seized upon Japan’s purchase of the islands as a pretext for pressing its longstanding claims.
They said that the continuing Chinese pressure has seemed to confirm a growing sense of Japanese insecurity over China’s rising economic and military presence in the region, as well as the relative decline of both itself and its longtime protector, the United States. That nervousness has made Japan more willing to push back. “It is disingenuous to claim the Japanese caused this problem,” said Kevin Maher, a former United States diplomat in Japan who is now a senior adviser at NMV Consulting, based in New York. “But this has been an eye-opening experience for people in Japan to see that the security environment in East Asia can be a dangerous place.”
Japan’s anxieties have also provided at least some opportunity for a small but vocal group of nationalists like Tokyo’s governor, Shintaro Ishihara, whom many in Japan blame for starting the current flare-up with China by proclaiming in the spring that he would buy the islands.
Analysts said it was unlikely that China would go as far as attempting a forceful takeover of the islands. Rather, said Mr. Maher, the goal may be to try to undermine Japan’s claims under international law that it wields effective control over them, while building a legal basis for making similar claims of its own.
China’s motives appear to be partly economic: the Chinese economy’s hunger for the petroleum and natural gas that scientists believe lie under the ocean floor surrounding the islands. Analysts also cited a Chinese desire for payback for Japan’s brutal World War II-era invasion of China. China says Japan seized the islands from China in 1895 as a first step toward Japan’s empire-building in Asia. Japan says it annexed islands that were not claimed by any nation.
The analysts said China may also have a military motive in claiming the islands, which sit in waters between China and Okinawa that the Chinese military would seek to control in the event of any conflict.
By deploying paramilitary ships, analysts said, both nations were being careful not to call in their navies, in order to avoid a dangerous escalation. Still, Japanese Coast Guard ships and many of China’s surveillance ships are armed, leading to concerns that a miscalculation or human error by a single sailor could touch off a violent confrontation.
The United States has so far taken a neutral position on sovereignty over the islands, though it has said any Chinese attack on the islands would fall under the treaty under which it is bound to defend Japan. Mr. Maher said the United States should take a more active role by telling China to stop the pressure tactics.
“The Chinese are using intimidation and threat of force against our closest ally in the region,” Mr. Maher said, “and this is not something that the U.S. should be neutral about.”
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