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By Micah McCartney
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China continued its deployment of heavily armed coast guard vessels near a disputed group of islets in the East China Sea this week, entering waters claimed by Japan for a record 330 consecutive days, Tokyo said on Wednesday.
Newsweek has contacted China’s Foreign Ministry for comment by email.
Why It Matters
Japan administers the uninhabited islands—known as the Senkaku in Japan, the Diaoyu in China and the Diaoyutai in Taiwan—located east of Taiwan and west of Japan’s Okinawa prefecture. The overlapping claims have made the area one of the most persistent flash points between two of Asia’s largest economies.
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China’s coast guard, the world’s largest, has sharply increased the tempo and duration of its patrols since Japan nationalized the islands in 2012, a move Tokyo said sought to preserve stability but Beijing denounced as a provocation and pretext to change the status quo.
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What To Know
Japanese media cited the 11th District Coast Guard Headquarters as saying four Chinese coast guard vessels, all equipped with autocannons, entered the contiguous zone surrounding the Senkakus on Tuesday.
A contiguous zone lies 12 to 24 nautical miles beyond a country’s territorial waters and serves as a buffer zone where foreign vessels may be monitored or warned against approaching too closely. Japanese patrol ships issued warnings urging the Chinese vessels not to cross into Japan’s territorial waters, officials said.
It marked the 330th straight day that Chinese ships had been sighted in the area, further extending a stretch of patrols in the zone that began in late December.
While Japan maintains administrative control of the islands, China continues to assert its own sovereignty.
China’s coast guard said in a statement that its ships had “sailed in the territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands” during what it called “a lawful patrol conducted in accordance with domestic and international law.”
The legal status of the Senkakus remains in dispute under international law. The U.S., since the administration of former President Barack Obama, has affirmed that its security treaty with Tokyo applies to any armed attack against the islands.
The latest patrols come amid broader regional tensions over China’s expanding military presence beyond the so-called first island chain, a string of islands stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines that the Pentagon sees as a natural line of containment for Chinese forces in the event of conflict.
What People Are Saying
Japan’s Defense Ministry wrote in its 2025 white paper: “China has been relentlessly continuing its unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force around the Senkaku Islands, leading to a matter of grave concern.”
John Lim Chuan-Tiong, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, wrote in an analysis: “[Sanae Takaichi] has long advocated the China Threat narrative and accused Beijing of undermining the global order. If she becomes prime minister, she is likely to very quickly strengthen coordination of the Japan Coast Guard and the Self-Defense Forces, and emphasize the establishment of a permanent monitoring system around the Senkaku Islands.”
What Happens Next
The islands are expected to remain a point of friction in Japan-China relations. It remains to be seen how Sanae Takaichi, a China hawk poised to become Japanese prime minister, will approach the issue.
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