Japan, formerly the bad guy in Sino-Japanese relations, is one of many countries that today must cope with the continuous aggression of China. A July 2023 Associated Press article reports:
China says its coast guard issued a warning to a Japanese fishing boat operating in waters surrounding uninhabited East China Sea islands that are controlled by Japan but claimed by China. . . .
The tiny islet is the easternmost of the eight islands making up the Senkaku chain, known as Diaoyu in Chinese.
Japan regularly scrambles jets and dispatches ships to ward off Chinese incursions into the air and waters surrounding the islands.
China’s insistence on sovereignty over the islands is part of its expansive territorial claims in the Pacific, including to underwater resources in the East China Sea, the self-governing island republic of Taiwan with its population of 23 million, and virtually the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in international trade passes each year.
Other countries also disagree with each other about who has what rights to a given territory. But without actually (yet) openly going to war over such disputes, China seems to always go further than other countries or almost any other country in asserting such claims, even when they are not even superficially plausible.
AP notes that Taiwan also claims rights over the Senkaku Islands. Even so, Taiwan and Japan have reached a mutual accommodation with respect to fishing in the area. Also, Taiwan does not “send ships or planes to contest Japan’s sovereignty as China does routinely.” The difference is between wanting to get along with a neighbor even when you have important disagreements and wanting, instead, to always elbow, shove, and cause trouble.
