A U.S. congressional report highlights China’s military expansion and strategic intentions regarding the Senkaku Islands. Persistent incursions and military activity raise the risk of Japan-China conflict and even a U.S.-China war. A critical warning on Japan’s evolving security environment.

Among China’s diverse developments, it can be said that what the United States pays the most serious attention to is, after all, military developments.
2018-01-17
The following continues from the previous chapter.
American concerns.
Among China’s diverse developments, it can be said that what the United States pays the most serious attention to is, after all, military developments.
This U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission continuously examines precisely the relationship between China’s military and economic trends.
As a correspondent stationed in Washington, I myself have long taken a strong interest in the activities of this commission.
I have frequently reported on the state and results of its activities.
In particular, in early 2001, just after I finished two years in Beijing as the Sankei Shimbun bureau chief in China and returned to my previous post in Washington, the commission had just begun its activities.
Therefore, since that point, developments in China and the U.S. response to them have drawn my particular attention.
Now then, in November the commission released its annual report for fiscal year 2017.
It was a massive report totaling 657 pages.
The contents referred not only to U.S.-China bilateral relations but also, in many chapters, to relations between Japan, an ally affecting U.S. national security, and China.
Regarding Japan-China relations, the report particularly emphasized that tensions between the two countries are rising due to China’s military-related offensives toward the Senkaku Islands, and it introduced the view that China is formulating concrete plans to seize the Senkaku Islands.
What emerges here is China’s ambitious and dangerous anti-Japan strategy.
The reality of this strategy toward Japan appears appropriate to characterize as a national crisis for Japan.
The main points of the report’s description regarding China’s intentions, actions, and the crisis arising from confrontation with Japan over the Senkaku Islands were as follows.

• The Chinese government regards Japan’s claims of sovereignty and administrative control over the Senkaku Islands as the result of illegal occupation of Chinese territory, and in order to overturn that “occupation,” repeatedly sends vessels of the People’s Liberation Army and the China Coast Guard into Japan’s territorial waters and contiguous zones around the Senkakus, intending to establish China’s rights and publicize the results.
• Chinese incursions into the waters around the Senkaku Islands were most frequent and active around 2013, but they have continued at a fairly high level since the summer of 2017, now averaging three times per month.
  Japan has also taken countermeasures, and as a result the Senkaku area has become the greatest potential flashpoint for military clashes between Japan and China through miscalculation, accident, or intent.
• China continues bombing exercises and surveillance flights in the airspace of the East China Sea centered on the Senkakus using various fighter jets, interceptors, and bombers of its air force, frequently triggering scramble responses from Japan.
  In particular, bombing drills by Chinese military aircraft over the Miyako Strait have drawn serious monitoring not only from Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force but also from the U.S. Air Force, heightening tensions.
• From the above situation, the confrontation between the two countries over the Senkaku Islands has become the greatest factor raising tensions in Japan-China relations and has actually begun to create the danger of military conflict.
  Behind this, China’s large-scale military expansion and aggressive behavior have further intensified Japan’s reaction and heightened tensions between Japan and China.
  In addition, a military clash over the Senkakus could immediately invite intervention by U.S. forces under the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and is therefore seen as a potential flashpoint for a U.S.-China war.
• Meng Xiangqing, director of the Strategic Research Institute of China’s National Defense University, stated in a recent paper that “China has already seized the actual governing authority over the Senkaku Islands long claimed by Japan.”
  This view is based on the current situation in which Chinese vessels can already freely enter Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, effectively hollowing out Japan’s asserted administrative control.
  If this continues, China may soon declare that Japan no longer holds administrative control over the Senkaku Islands.
  To be continued.