China said on Thursday its Liaoning aircraft carrier had been on a routine training mission in the western Pacific and dismissed charges by Tokyo that the vessel and its escorts had entered Japanese waters.
In the latest incident in a drawn-out dispute between Beijing and Tokyo over maritime activities, Japan's defense ministry said on Wednesday the carrier and two accompanying destroyers had sailed between Japan's southern Yonaguni and Iriomote islands in waters where Japan can exert control.
China's defense ministry responded on Thursday by saying the vessels were on a training exercise that was in line with relevant international laws. It did not give an exact location for the flotilla.
"There is no need for relevant parties to over-interpret it," the defense ministry said in a statement.
Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya said on Wednesday that Tokyo had conveyed its serious concerns to Beijing, describing the incident as "utterly unacceptable".
Japan would continue to closely monitor Chinese naval vessels' activities in the surrounding waters, Moriya said.
An increase in Chinese military activity near Japan and around the island of Taiwan in recent years has worried Tokyo. Japan has responded with a defense buildup it says aims to deter China from using military force to push its territorial claims in the region.
Last month, Japan lodged a protest with Beijing after a Chinese navy survey vessel entered Japanese waters. It also accused a Chinese spy plane of breaching its airspace.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.
43 Comments
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TaiwanIsNotChina
One thing is for sure: our CCP mouthpieces will have to stick by their newfound love of freedom of navigation to within 15km of baselines such as in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Also nice ramp on that aircraft carrier :)
englisc aspyrgend
The CCP were never going to admit to anything. Short of sinking the thing (no I am not advocating such a thing) there doesn’t appear much Japan can do save repeat in West Taiwan’s waters?
deanzaZZR
Actually it's completely acceptable under international law and customary maritime practices. Deal with it like an adult.
JJE
Hope it has been cleared up: contiguous waters are international waters.
An easy error to make with a big word and Sinophobia going hand in hand.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I'm so glad you've signed up to condemn China's actions around the Second Thomas Shoal and Taiwan Strait. Learning what is right and moral is tough I know.
Meiyouwenti
China bought Liaonig from Ukraine and refurbished it. Now Japan is pledging millions of dollars in aid to the east European country.
Yrral
Meiy,is the gambling good aboard the Liaonig
JJE
LOL well spotted.
That is indeed the former Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag, sold in 1992 to China by Ukraine.
What a delicious irony.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Yeah they should have scuttled it in Sevastapol harbor.
obladi
"China says..." does not overwhelm me with confidence.
JJE
It was built in Southern Ukraine. They inherited it on breakup of USSR, then sold it to China.
Can't find any record of that ship going to the Hero City of Sevastopol in its previous Soviet career. Construction not even complete.
stormcrow
Good. Then you won’t mind the new anti-ship missiles being installed.
ian
In the news yesterday it was contiguous seas now Thomson Reuters is saying Japanese waters.
Or were they separate incidents ?
Desert Tortoise
Even if the distance between the islands was less, so that their 12 nm territorial limits overlapped, under international maritime law there would be a passage between them that is international waters. There is a similar navigable passage of international waters in the Tsugaru Strait between Kyushu and Hokkaido. Any nation's ships may pass through there.
Desert Tortoise
Sloppy reporting by people who are not versed in maritime law. I'm surprised they didn't call it a "battleship" like these reporters call every other warship.
ian
Can't be. It's deliberate most likely
nik
Taiwan is China and nothing else
TaiwanIsNotChina
Not by the will of the 24 million people there and they are all that matters.
JJE
Interesting.
So, a similar navigable passage of international waters would logically apply to the two islands related to this article.
voiceofokinawa
There were two factions in 19 c. Ryukyu Kingdom: the China faction and the Japan faction contending against each other which country, China or Japan, Ryukyu should be part of. Protesters against the forced Japan amalgamation .went to Beijing for help and keep the kingdom independent. But Beijing and Tokyo signed an agreement over local heads that China would control the Sakishima group (Miyako and Yaeyama) while Japan control Okinawa Island and beyond toward the northeast.
One member of the China faction stationed in Beijing vehemently opposed to the deal to separately control Ryukyu and committed suicide to lodge protest. Thus, the agreement did not see the light of day.
Is it because of this historical fact that the Beijing government claims that the China's flotilla of warships entered the sovereign waters of Japan, saying they did so in accordance with China's internal law as well as the international law?
Peter14
nikToday 01:38 pm JST
Taiwan is Republic of China and nothing else. Fixed it for you.
Your welcome.
Peter14
JJEToday 03:28 pm JST
Desert TortoiseToday 01:00 pm JST
Hardly what is interesting. What actually IS interesting is that China complains loudly for all to hear when others sail hundreds of km's from their nearest territory up to and including sailing within 40-50km of China's mainland in the Taiwan straight, but simply dismisses when it (China) sails close to anyone else.
This indicates all complaints from China regards FON sailing by all other nations is simply a ruse and not based on anything real. So we can all simply ignore Chinese indignation and complaints about where others sail, it means nothing. Good to know.
MiuraAnjin
The story of how the Varyag got from Ukraine to China is a comedy of errors and well worth a documentary, if not a Netfilx re-enactment.
ian
The ROC in its constitution still asserts sovereignty over the entire territory of mainland China and Taiwan.
Everyone knows what that means.
Right?
John
With its antiquated ski jump technology that doesn’t allow for fully armed jets, this crap-show represents a juicy target.
Hope they can swim.
Desert Tortoise
This is a situation encountered all over the world. The Straits of Malacca have overlapping territorial waters in places but there is a well defined and well regulated traffic scheme for global shipping and that lane is very much international waters (if you ever sailed it it's like being on an LA freeway but with ships, really crowded). Same thing in the Straits of Hormuz where Omani and Iranian territorial seas overlap. There is a channel between that is international waters. Seas around Indonesia and the Philippines have multiple such channels. Ditto the Agean where Greek and Turkish territorial seas overlap, and are as hotly disputed as any in the South China Sea! Likewise the Danish Straits between the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
Desert Tortoise
Soviet engineers could never make a catapult work. The challenge is to maintain steam pressure all the way down the length of the catapult run. It's not easy to do. A secondary challenge that defeated the Soviets was maintaining a good seal. But I was an active duty Naval Aviator when the first such Soviet aircraft carrier was commissioned and there was grudging respect for the Soviets getting as far as they did. Yeah the ski jump has major limitations but we kind of admired their pluck for coming up with the ski jump idea, and they managed to master arrested landings. Landing is the toughest part. Why the Soviets went with the Flanker instead of the MiG-29 remains a mystery. The MiG-29 can carry more ordnance over the ski jump than the Flanker. Watching videos of their flight ops and pondering the idea of launching something like a Tomcat or Hornet over ski jump made our rectums clench :o
You also have to keep in mind the intent of that carrier was to protect their Barents Sea bastion against NATO P-3 Orion ASW aircraft that would be thicker than flies on dog doo hunting down their SSBNs in the event of a war. The US, UK and Norway would have flooded the Barents with ASW assets including subs and Orions and RAF Nimrods hunting those SSBNs and their carrier was designed to go after the patrol planes.
The PLANs newest aircraft carrier has electromagnetic catapults and is quite similar in size and capability to a Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier. Same size/displacement but only two elevators where the Kitty Hawks had four, and only three cats where the Kitty Hawks had four, so they won't be able to match the sortie rates of American carriers, but still a huge improvement over what the Soviets and Russians have achieved.
elephant200
The Russians abandoned the Yak141 STOVL fighter was a big pity, they have been investing the supersonic jump jet technology throughout the 1980s and it was a shocking sudden cancellation just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I think it was the traitors like Boris Yeltsin sold the Yak 141 tech. to US that later became F35B, there won't be and never being coincidence like this.
Right now they even don't have the shipyard to build or serving the aircraft carriers. The Russian navy will be a sole submarine fleet with some corvettes support. After the third Chinese aircraft carrier 003 Fujian came to service, these ski deck aircraft carriers will be retired from first line and serving for training purpose.
TaiwanIsNotChina
It means the PRC should f off so Taiwan can declare indepedence and make the needed changes to their constitution.
TaiwanIsNotChina
The only mistake Yeltsin made was making Putie Put his succesor. The F-35 is not soviet tech since ancient times.
elephant200
The PRC should f off so Taiwan can declare indepedence and make the needed changes to their constitution.
NO! Taiwan independence is not feasible because it is not and never being a colony like India,Pakistan and gained their independence from Britain.
Taiwan was part of the Manchurian empire, it was ceded to Japan in 1895 by Japanese aggression. The Manchurian empire is no more existing but inheritaged by Republic of China and later The People's Republic of China !
TaiwanIsNotChina
Donbass and Crimea are part of Ukraine and that even has the force of law behind it. Times change. Zero colonial troops present on Taiwan.
Agent_Neo
What the Chinese Communist Party claims is always nonsense.
That is the common understanding around the world.
Desert Tortoise
After the Russian Navy cancelled the Yak-41M (aka Yak-141) program for lack of funding Lockheed-Martin, which at the time was working on the X-35 for the JSF program, funded further development of the Yak briefly circa 1991-92 time frame. Lockheed-Martin planned to fund three new prototypes and a static test aircraft along with making some design changes to increase the maximum take off weight.
Desert Tortoise
Before the Chinese arrived on Taiwan it was a Spanish and Dutch colony. The Spanish didn't last very long as the Dutch ran them out. Dutch control lasted about 75-100 years. The Dutch in turn were run out by the Chinese warlord Koxinga. Koxinga was a Southern Ming General fighting the takeover by the Qing. He was at that point on the run having lost a major battle over Nanjing and forced to flee the mainland.
Desert Tortoise
Taiwan is not naturally part of China. The native population is Austronesian, ethnic and linguistic relatives of the people of Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Philippines, Micronesia, Island Melanesia and Polynesia. Han Chinese didn't begin settling Taiwan until the 17th Century. If anything the Han Chinese are the colonizers.
deanzaZZR
People repeatedly love to trot out this fallacy. The Spaniards and Dutch only controlled a few forts in parts of Taiwan to facilitate trade, not the whole island, with Dutch soldiers and administrators only numbering in the hundreds.
Ironically the Dutch brought Han Chinese over from the mainland as laborers and to cultivate the land.
The Qing were busy conquering Mongols to the north and west and once that was settled they understood that the island of Taiwan was a potential security problem hence the annexation of the island to the Qing in late 17th century.
elephant200
Donbass and Crimea are part of Ukraine and that even has the force of law behind it. Times change.
Taiwan is irrelevant with the scenario of Ukraine or the Russo-Ukranian conflict.It was absolutely nothing to do with your "Time change", an unprofound excuse!
elephant200
@Desert: Han Chinese didn't begin settling Taiwan until the 17th Century. If anything the Han Chinese are the colonizers.
Due to your reasoning, the North America, South America, Australia,New Zealand.... all of these English, Spanish, French, Portuguese speaking white people were illegal immigrants, they are aliens from Europe and they should leave !
Desert Tortoise
In a sense yes. The European powers colonized all of the Americas and most of the Asia Pacific region including large areas of China. That is a fact though some are apparently uncomfortable with acknowledging it. Most of the nations that came out of those colonies have yet to come to terms with their colonial pasts and fully acknowledge the barbarities inflicted on the aborigine populations that existed before they were colonized.
Peter14
Those people are all long dead, so nobody's going to dig up their remains and "deport" them.
The people there were born and raised there and are native, with biology from other parts of the world. Humans have emigrated in waves throughout the world and its history, and sending everyone back to the point of origin would make Africa very crowded and the rest of the planet empty of all humans.
theFu
Clearly, the aircraft carrier was collecting water samples to ensure the safety of seafood for the entire world!
Er .... maybe not.