East Asian Tensions on the Rise

The Japanese government announced on 02 January 2023 that it had dispatched fighter jets, tactical aircraft, and warships to keep tabs on a Chinese naval flotilla conducting maneuvers and flight operations in the Western Pacific.

In a press release, Japan’s Ministry of Defense set forth that the Chinese carrier-group—comprising a Liaoning aircraft carrier and five escort vessels—had departed the East China Sea on 16 December 2022, and sailed east, between the Japanese Islands of Okinawa and Miyakojima, then on to open Pacific waters.

Over the following two week period, Chinese naval aviators conducted upward of three-hundred carrier take-offs and landings of both fixed and rotary-wing aircraft before the carrier group returned to China’s territorial waters via the same route by which it had previously steamed. The Japanese Ministry of Defense conceded that no incursions of Japanese waters or airspace were made by the Chinese forces.

In addition to the carrier group, Japan reported a Chinese WZ-7 drone operating near Miyako-jima—the largest and most populous island of the Okinawa Prefecture’s Miyako Islands. Flights of the high-altitude, long-endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) had not formerly been detected in the vicinity of Japan.

The Chinese saber rattling followed an announcement by Japanese officials that the island nation would double defense spending over the next five-years for purpose of deterring Chinese belligerence in the East Asian region. Of particular concern to Japan are Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, and the looming prospect of China’s People’s Liberation Army forces being deployed to seize the island—with which Japan maintains strong but constrained ties.

Japan, as a matter of necessity, deftly balances its relations with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Owing to Tokyo’s “One China” policy, Japan’s bilateral ties with Taiwan are effectively a function of its bilateral ties with the PRC. Notwithstanding the recent strengthening of ties between Tokyo and Taipei, Sino-Japanese relations will continue to dictate the rate at and the extent to which Japan makes diplomatic, economic, and ideological inroads into Taiwan.

FMI: www.japan.go.jp