Tokyo protests the continuous military ramp up by China near Japan’s coastlines and a group of disputed islets and is now repositioning its mobile radar system in the region due to the threat posed by Beijing.
China has upped its naval and air presence in the East China Sea, which stretches between the two countries and expands into the wider western Pacific. On Tuesday, Tokyo protested after a Chinese navy survey ship entered Japanese waters for about three hours.
The dispute over Diaoyu Islands is also a bone of contention between China and Japan. China claims the islands, which it calls the Diaoyu Islands, as its own, reported Voice of America.
In January, a Japanese city government was planning to seek permission from officials in Tokyo to land on the disputed Senkaku Islands and plant signposts.
Hopes have run low for the settlement of this dispute as the Chinese Embassy has said that no matter what the contended area will remain a part of China. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said, “No matter what Japan does, it can never change the fact that Diaoyudao [the Diaoyu Islands] is part of China.”
“China’s determination to safeguard the territorial sovereignty of the Diaoyudao is firm,” the spokesperson added.
On April 15, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said that the number of scrambles targeting foreign aircraft rose by 279 over the year ending in March, compared with the previous year. The ministry logged more than 1,000 such incidents in the past year, many involving China, according to Japanese media outlets.
Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies think tank in Taiwan said, China hopes to deter other countries, including Japan, from challenging it in the western Pacific, as per the media portal.
Japan and the United States, a superpower rival of China’s over the past five decades, have been treaty allies since 1951. The two sides will “consolidate or update” their alliance to “fend off a Chinese incursion,” Yang predicted.