The Japanese media reported that the nation is scared the radar could be a sign of China’s intentions to use the gas exploration platforms as military stations in the conflicted zone.
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Relations between China and the Philippines were severely undermined when Manila took the South China Sea dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, triggering furious reactions from Beijing.
On Tuesday morning, the Japan Coast Guard said it spotted Chinese ships in the country’s territorial waters surrounding the islands and about a dozen others nearby.
Beijing has been increasingly assertive about waters it believes are Chinese.
Since the ruling, China has repeatedly reasserted its historical claim to the virtually the entire strategically vital water body, its islands, reefs, plentiful fish stocks and other resources. The U.S. has called on China to respect the ruling, but has not staged another freedom of navigation mission in which its ships sail near China’s artificial islands, which draw warnings and rebukes from Beijing.
China “wants to see how far they can push until they get pushed back”, Maher said.
The Japanese government has increasingly been on alert over China’s activities, now on an unprecedented scale, in the East China Sea.
Raising tensions with its neighbours and the US even higher, China claimed the exercise was created to normalise such drills.
South Korea’s presidential office on Sunday rebuked China over its criticism of South Korea’s decision to deploy the anti-missile defence, urging China instead to play a stronger role against North Korea’s provocations.
The photos, collected and scrutinized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research organization, show the construction of what appear to be reinforced aircraft hangars at Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs, all part of the disputed territories.
In July, China rejected an worldwide tribunal ruling that its claims have no rights in the South China Sea, raising tensions with neighbours who have competing claims in the area.
Washington’s alliances with Japan and South Korea are crucial to its strategic pivot to Asia but the three countries have been coordinating with China over the years in a flagging effort to curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Japan is demanding China remove surveillance equipment from a gas-drilling platform in global waters in the East China Sea, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Yet the strong economic ties and the stumbling diplomacy could help defuse potential clashes.
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The air force didn’t say when the exercises took place, but after the July 12 arbitration ruling, the air force had said such patrols would be “a regular practice”.
