The Japanese government said on Friday it had confirmed that China had installed a buoy in international waters off Japan’s southern continental shelf in the Pacific Ocean, a move that could further strain relations between the two countries.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a press conference that it was “regrettable” that China had installed a small buoy in the waters north of Okinotorishima, off the coast of Shikoku, without providing any details about its purpose.
The government has strongly urged China not to harm Japan’s maritime rights and interests, and China has responded that it installed the buoys to monitor for tsunamis and has no intention of infringing on Japan’s sovereignty over its continental shelf, a government spokesman said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi holds a press conference in Tokyo on July 5, 2024. (Kyodo News)
A Japanese government source confirmed that the Chinese survey vessel, the Xiangyanghong 22, had installed the buoy in mid-June while monitoring ships passing through Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, a region that is surrounded by Japan’s EEZ.
Hayashi said the Japanese government will continue to collect and analyze relevant information.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Mao Ning said the tsunami monitoring buoys are installed in international waters “for the purposes of scientific research and public interest” and that this is an “established international practice” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“Japan has no right to interfere in such activities,” she told a news conference in Beijing.
Last July, China installed new buoys within Japan’s EEZ near the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea controlled by Tokyo and claimed by Beijing, prompting Japan to protest and demand their immediate removal.
Mao said the islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands, are Chinese territory and the waters around them are under Chinese jurisdiction, so “it is legitimate and lawful for China to install hydrological and meteorological data buoys in these areas.”
China has been stepping up its military activities and maritime assertiveness in regional waters, and Japan has protested repeated incursions by Chinese vessels into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands.
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