The Japan Coast Guard said Tuesday it had expelled two Chinese coast guard ships from waters near disputed islands also claimed by Beijing.<\/p>\n
The Chinese ships were approaching a Japanese fishing vessel operating in the area, Japan\u2019s coast guard said.<\/p>\n
The two countries have a long-running territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands \u2014 known as the Diaoyu in China \u2014 which lie between Taiwan and Okinawa Prefecture.<\/p>\n
They have figured for decades in bilateral tensions, which have worsened since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made comments about Taiwan in November that angered Beijing.<\/p>\n
Chinese ships last entered waters Japan claims as its territory on June 10, but it is rare for vessels to approach Japanese fishing boats.<\/p>\n
The Japanese coast guard \u201cissued orders to leave … successfully forcing the Chinese coast guard vessels to leave Japanese territorial waters by approximately 9:20 a.m. today,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
In addition, the coast guard \u201cwas deployed around the Japanese fishing vessel to ensure its safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were four Chinese ships sailing around the area before two of them entered Japanese waters, the statement said.<\/p>\n
It added that the activities of the Chinese coast guard vessels constituted \u201ca violation of international law.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Japan Coast Guard will continue to respond calmly and resolutely in accordance with international and domestic law, and will take every possible measure to ensure the security of our territorial waters,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
China routinely deploys its coast guard ships around the disputed islands, prompting dangerous maritime standoffs with its Japanese counterpart.<\/p>\n
China has also sent boats to other disputed waters in the East China Sea, which is believed to hold possible deposits of energy reserves, despite repeated protests by Japan to stop.<\/p>\n
Takaichi said in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily in any attack on self-ruled Taiwan, which China views as its territory and has not ruled out taking by force.<\/p>\n
Beijing condemned her comments, and has since urged its citizens against traveling to Japan as well as tightened trade restrictions on some Japanese firms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Japan Coast Guard said Tuesday it had expelled two Chinese coast guard ships from waters near disputed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[462,6939,8,746,17,162,14546,488],"class_list":["post-54340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-china-japan-relations","tag-fishing","tag-japan","tag-japan-coast-guard","tag-japanese","tag-okinawa","tag-senkaku","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}