Japan’s Defense Ministry on Saturday said a Chinese ship had violated the country’s southwestern territorial waters in the contested East China Sea.
The Hai Yang 25, a hydrographic survey ship, sailed into Japan’s territorial waters west of Kuchinoerabu Island at 6 a.m. on Saturday. It left the waters southwest of the island of Yakushima at 7:53 a.m., Japan’s Defense Ministry said. The Japanese navy sent a minesweeper and a patrol aircraft to monitor the Chinese vessel, according to Japan’s Kyodo News.
Both islands are part of the Osumi Islands, situated in the Ryukyu Archipelago. The archipelago forms the first island chain, which extends southward from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines. The first island chain is part of the U.S.’ island chain strategy, a containment strategy aimed at limiting China’s naval activity in any potential future conflict.
The nearby Osumi Strait, situated between the Osumi Peninsula on the Japanese island of Kyushu and the island of Tanegashima in the Osumi Islands, is one of the major waterways used by the Chinese navy to deploy to the Philippine Sea and wider Pacific Ocean, beyond the first island chain.
The Hai Yang 25 is a Type 636A hydrographic survey ship with a full displacement of 5,883 tons, the Japanese Defense Ministry reported. This type of ship is often used to conduct research on underwater topography for submarine navigation, Kyodo News said.
The Japanese Defense Ministry said Tokyo has protested and conveyed its strong concern over the incident to Beijing via diplomatic channels between the two sides. This was the tenth intrusion by China’s survey ship into Japan’s waters off Kyushu since November 2021, Kyodo News reported.
Newsweek has contacted both the defense and foreign ministries in Beijing for comment by email.
Japan’s Defense Ministry
The incident comes less than a week after a Chinese air force Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft violated Japanese airspace on August 26.
“China has no intention of intruding into the airspace of any country,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the following day.
JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images
Chinese navy and coast guard vessels have repeatedly operated in waters near Japan, a security ally of the United States. Both Beijing and Tokyo claim the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, known as the Diaoyu Islands in China.
They have been the subject of patrols by Chinese government vessels since Japan decided to nationalize the islets in 2012. In July, the Chinese coast guard set a new record when its fleet patrolled the Senkaku Islands for 200 consecutive days.
Another Type 636A hydrographic survey ship, Hai Yang 26, was operating in the South China Sea near Vietnam recently. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said on June 6 that it opposed illegal Chinese survey operations within the country’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.