Relax, we’re just trying to monitor tsunamis, China tells Japan. The Japanese government isn’t buying the explanation, but its response seems meager (“Japan confirms China set up buoy over its southern continental shelf,” Japan Today, July 5, 2024).
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi [shown above] told a news conference it was “regrettable” that China has set up a small buoy in the waters off Japan’s western main island of Shikoku and north of the southernmost Okinotori Island “without explaining its purpose and other details.”
The government has urged China not to undermine Japan’s maritime interests, with Beijing responding that it installed the buoy to monitor tsunami and does not intend to infringe upon Tokyo’s sovereignty over the continental shelf, the top government spokesman said….
The open-sea area in question is surrounded by Japan’s [exclusive economic zone].
China wants to (at least) take over everything in the vicinity of itself, and whether by dropping buoys or ramming vessels continually causes trouble of one sort or another in the waters of various countries bordering the South China Sea and East China Sea.
In July of last year, China conducted a similar marking of territory, installing a buoy “near the Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.” So it would be foolhardy to accept the Chinese government’s assertions about the “real” purpose of the buoys, set up without first consulting the Japanese.
Commenters on the Japan Today article want the Japanese government to do more in response to the territorial markers than it’s apparently willing to do.
● “You know this is just the beginning of whatever they [China] plan to do next.”
● “Any buoy illegally set up by China must be immediately removed. No statements about the situation being ‘regrettable,’ no waiting for (fallacious) explanations from the totalitarian menace: just do it. China only understands firm action, and cannot be trusted in any way.”
● China keeps “chipping away at Japan’s (and others’) resolve. They won’t stop. But they will bleat about ‘correct actions’ and maintaining peace and stability in the seas if you retaliate, even by removing the buoy (or shooting down the balloon, in other cases)…. Time to take the grey-zone threats to China itself.”
● “Unless the Japanese remove it, the Chinese have won. They’ll say it has established a border and a ‘correct understanding of history’ and then defend it with the PLA. Japan has just ceded the entirety of its territory if it does nothing. I assume they’ll do nothing.”
● “Things that float don’t when they get a hole in them….”
