China coast guard patrolled Japan-held islands almost daily in 2025 amid tensions
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
China’s coast guard patrolled Japan-administered islands in the East China Sea almost every day in 2025.
PHOTO: REUTERS
BEIJING – China’s coast guard patrolled Japan-administered islands in the East China Sea almost daily in 2025, it said on Jan 30, aiming to secure its sovereignty over the remote, rocky outpost and deter Taiwan from taking steps towards independence.
The patrols near the tiny islands – known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China – could add to tensions as Beijing and Tokyo are embroiled in their biggest diplomatic dispute in more than a decade, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Tokyo might intervene if China attacked Taiwan.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its territory, and has never renounced the use of force to “reunify” with the island. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claim and says only the island’s people can decide their own fate.
China’s coast guard patrolled the Senkaku/Diaoyu for 357 days in 2025, coast guard head Zhang Jianming told a press briefing on maritime law enforcement. Over the past five years, it organised 134 patrols and deployed 550,000 vessels and 6,000 aircraft around the islands, Mr Zhang added.
Reuters reported in May 2025 that Beijing appeared to be stepping up coast guard and naval activity in waters including the East China Sea, in an attempt to reinforce dominance in the region.
The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands lie within the strategic first island chain stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines. The string of islands is controlled by US allies and contains the expansion of China’s growing naval power.
The last major maritime dispute was in 2010, when Japan’s coast guard detained the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese vessels near the islands, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
Tensions flared again in 2012 when the Japanese government announced it had bought some of the disputed islets from their private Japanese owners. China sent patrol ships in response.
The most recent confrontation in the area came in December 2025, when China said it had expelled an “illegal” Japanese fishing vessel from the waters around the islands, while Japan said it had intercepted and expelled two Chinese coast guard ships that were approaching the vessel.
Tokyo has since begun encouraging fishermen to avoid the islands in an effort not to further inflame tensions, Reuters reported. Japan declined to comment. REUTERS
