China's coast guard patrolled around Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea almost daily last year, Beijing said, aiming to protect its sovereignty over the remote rocky islets and deter Taiwan from taking steps towards independence, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
The patrols near the small islands – known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China – could escalate tensions as Beijing and Tokyo are embroiled in their biggest diplomatic row in more than a decade after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan could intervene if China attacks Taiwan.
China claims democratically-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has never ruled out the use of force to "reunify" the island. Taiwan's government rejects China's claims of sovereignty and says only the islanders can decide their own fate.
China's coast guard patrolled around the Senkaku/Diaoyudia for 357 days last year, coast guard chief Zhang Jiangming said at a press conference on maritime law enforcement. Over the past five years, it has organized 134 patrols and deployed 550,000 ships and 6,000 aircraft around the islands, Zhang said.
Reuters reported in May that Beijing appeared to be ramping up its coast guard and naval activity in waters including the East China Sea in a bid to assert its dominance in the region.
The Senkaku/Diaoyudiao are in the strategic First Island Chain, stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. The chain of islands is controlled by U.S. allies and serves as a buffer against China’s growing naval power.
The last major maritime dispute was in 2010, when the Japanese coast guard detained the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese ships near the islands, sparking a diplomatic crisis. Tensions flared again in 2012 when the Japanese government announced it had bought some of the disputed islands from their private Japanese owners. In response, China sent patrol ships. The latest confrontation in the area occurred last month, when China said it had chased an "illegal" Japanese fishing boat out of waters around the islands, and Japan said it had intercepted and chased away two Chinese coast guard vessels that were approaching the vessel.
Tokyo has since encouraged fishermen to avoid the islands to avoid further escalating tensions, Reuters reported.