Japan says Chinese military activity in East China Sea escalating

Visiting Chinese destroyer the Qingdao (front) and Indian naval tanker Shakti (back) dock at the dock of the Naval Operational Command in the city of Busan, South Korea. PHOTO: EPA

TOKYO (REUTERS) - Chinese military activity is escalating in the East China Sea, Japan's top military commander said on Thursday (June 30), noting that Japanese emergency scrambles to counter Chinese jets had almost doubled in the past three months.

Japanese air force jet scrambled around 200 times in the three months ending on Thursday compared with 114 times in the year-earlier period, he said. Detailed figures for the period will be announced next week.

"It appears that Chinese activity is escalating at sea and in the air," Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, said at a regular press briefing in Tokyo.

Japan is embroiled in a dispute with China in the East China Sea over ownership of a group of islands which lie about 220km north-east of Taiwan known as the Senkakus in Tokyo and the Diaoyu islands in Beijing.

Japan is worried that China is escalating its activity in the East China Sea in response to Tokyo's pledge to support countries in South-east Asia, including the Philippines and Vietnam, that oppose China's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Admiral Kawano said that Japan was "very concerned" about how China will react to a ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in a case brought by the Philippines on China's claims. The ruling is due on July 12.

Manila is contesting China's claim to about 90 per cent of the South China Sea, arguing it violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and restricts its rights to exploit resources within its exclusive economic zone.

China has refused to recognise the case.

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