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War of Islands: Tensions between Japan and China rising
New satellite images have largely confirmed earlier reports that China is building a military base near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands that Japan also claims and administers.
Last week IHS Jane’s reported that satellite images from October 2014 show that China is building a heliport with 10 landing pads and wind turbines on Nanji Island, which is one of 52 islands on an archipelago that is part of Zhejiang province. Nanji Islands is only 300 km from the disputed Senkaku Islands. By contrast, Okinawa— which hosts major U.S. and Japanese military bases— are 400 km away from the disputed islands.
(Reuters) – The United States would welcome a move by Japan to extend air patrols into the South China Sea as a counterweight to a growing fleet of Chinese vessels pushing Beijing’s territorial claims in the region, a senior U.S. Navy officer told Reuters.
Currently, regular patrols by Japanese aircraft only reach into the East China Sea, where Tokyo is at loggerheads with Beijing over disputed islands. Extending surveillance flights into the South China Sea will almost certainly increase tensions between the world’s second- and third-largest economies.
“I think allies, partners and friends in the region will look to the Japanese more and more as a stabilizing function,” Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the Seventh Fleet and the top U.S. navy officer in Asia, said in an interview.
Similarly, a senior researcher at the Chinese Naval Research Institute toldBloomberg that China’s military already has a small military presence on the island, which it is likely to expand. “It’s a strategically important location because of its proximity to the Diaoyu Islands…. It’s unarguable that China would like to enhance the existing military presence there.”
The new base will greatly strengthen China’s ability to conduct surveillance over the Senkaku Islands as well as the rest of the area it claimed as part of its East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in November 2013.
Thomas’s comments show Pentagon support for a key element of Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for a more active military role in the region. That is crucial because U.S and Japanese officials are now negotiating new bilateral security guidelines expected to give Japan a bigger role in the alliance, 70 years after the end of World War Two.
“I think that JSDF (Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces) operations in the South China Sea makes sense in the future,” Thomas said.
