Chino, Japan, May 9, 2020—For the first time ever, China’s coastguard ships May 8 chased after a Japanese fishing boat inside the Japanese territorial waters near the Japanese sovereign islands of Senkaku, in the Sea of Japan, a Japanese coast guard spokesman confirmed to me May 9.
‘This is the first time that Chinese government ships chased a Japanese ship in the greater Okinawa waters,’ Akihiro Nakatsuyama, head of the public affairs office of the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Naha, Okinawa, told The Prospect in a telephone interview. In May 2019, Chinese coastguard ships cruised close to Japanese fishing boats operating near Senkaku but did not chase, he said.
Two Chinese coastguard ships, out of the fleet of four of them that had been spotted within the Japanese territorial waters off Senkaku Islands, sped after the Japanese fishing boat with three crew members at 04:50 a.m., May 9, Nakatsuyama said.
Asked how the headquarters confirmed the chase, the spokesman said the Japanese fishing boat radioed the headquarters, which immediately instructed a Japanese coastguard ship patrolling nearby to rush to the scene about 12 kilometers west-southwest of Uotsuri Shima Island, one of the Senkaku Islands.
The two Chinese ships left the area when the Japanese coastguard ship radioed the Chinese ships to end the chase and leave, the spokesman said.
Nakatsuyama declined to comment on whether Chinese ships are entering Japanese territorial waters more frequently than before or the reasons of the chase as a matter of policy. The latest hustling incident was the eighth Chinese violation of the Japanese waters near Senkaku, he said.
On April 11, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and five Chinese Navy cruisers and supply ship traveled in open waters between Japan’s southern islands of Miyako Island and Okinawa, the first time since June 2019, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.
##
Insight Into the Future