Chino, Japan, July 24, 2020—On this rainy summer day when the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games should have began with loud fanfare had it not been for the corona virus pandemic, Chinese coastguard ships probably are perilously lurking around Senkaku Islands as Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe is understood to be cocooned at home with his wife and pet dog and keeping mum about the Chinese threat.
A spokesman for the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, based in the southernmost province of Okinawa, told me that two Chinese coastguard ships remained in the ‘contiguous zone’ bordering with the Japanese territorial waters as of late July 24. It marked the 102th consecutive day that Chinese government patrol ships remained in the zone, he said. There were no Japanese flag carriers near the two Chinese ships, he said.
China had told Japan to instruct Japanese fishing board to halt operating near Senkaku arguing that the fishing boats ‘violated’ Chinese exclusive waters. China also demanded that Tokyo tell the assembly of Ishigaki Island City to register Senkaku as part of the city’s district, according to Japanese news reports quoting diplomatic sources July 19.
On July 22, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, reiterated to reporters in Beijing that Senkaku Islands are ‘China’s inherent land’ as well as that the Chinese coastguard vessels have the inherent rights of cruising’ the area and that Beijing ‘refuses to receive the Japanese government’s protest,’ according to Japanese news reports from Beijing.
Over the past few months, as the world media attention has been glued to the corona virus pandemic, Chinese patrol ships have been traveling around the Senkaku Island waters far more frequently than before. Through July 3 this year, Chinese ships cruised in Japan’s territorial waters as many as 14 times, the Japanese coast guard spokesman said earlier.
The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has kept quiet through much of the escalating Chinese violations. On July 23, Japan, the country of 126 million people, began a summer vacation with two legal holidays added to the weekend as an alternative event of the Tokyo Olympic Games that were to begin the same day but were postponed to next year because of the pandemic. Abe, too, went on vacation, probably sitting on the sofa of his house with his wife and dog and listening to music, but without releasing any statement or comment to the Chinese aggression.
On July 19, the Japanese coast guard took delivery of the 6,500-ton new coast guard ship Reimei from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. The ship is the largest Japanese patrol vessel and is equipped with a heliport. It is expected to be commissioned to patrol the southern Japanese waters including Senkaku.
Yet, absent instructions from the prime minister, it’s questionable whether the coast guard can do the job they are supposed to do.
Abe currently is ‘self-quarantining’ not against the corona pandemic but from the public/media scrutiny over the probe of two lawmakers close to him that were known to be the masterminds of a payoff scandal to buy votes in a national election. Abe is widely reported as the kingmaker of this and a string of other scandals that splashed headlines in the Japanese media over the past few years.
Last time he cocooned himself claiming that he had developed a serious intestinal disorder (which was true) was the massive resignation of his ministers from his first cabinet in 2007.
###
Insight Into the Future