From Newsweek, August 7:
On Tuesday, Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono at a press conference announced the Self-Defense Force, essentially Japan's military, would work with the country's Coast Guard in protecting the Senkaku Islands. His comments were in response to increased Chinese provocations around those uninhabited features.....MUCH MORE
Why are these eight rocks in the East China Sea of any concern? They could trigger history's next great conflict, perhaps as early as this month.
China is determined to take the Senkakus. On August 2, Sankei News, the conservative-leaning Japanese newspaper, reported that Beijing had informed Tokyo that a large number of Chinese fishing vessels and government ships might, at the end of a fishing-suspension period on the 16th of this month, enter territorial waters around those islands. (China calls them the Diaoyus.)
China's officials, according to Sankei, informed Tokyo that it "is not entitled to demand" the boats leave, a clear Chinese assertion of sovereignty over the islands. The University of Miami's June Teufel Dreyer, a Japan specialist, told Newsweek this statement is "new and different and no good."
Hundreds of fishing vessels making their way to a group of uninhabited features might not sound like much, but in effect Beijing warned Toyko it would soon pry them from Japan.
China and Taiwan both claim the specks, which have been under Japanese control since the U.S. turned over administrative rights to Tokyo pursuant to a 1971 agreement. Washington did that when it reverted sovereignty over the nearby Ryukyu chain to Japan.
Taiwan has not pressed its claim vigorously, but China, which prior to that agreement recognized the islands as Japanese, has since gone on a bender. For the last eight years, Beijing, in especially belligerent moves, has been sending vessels and aircraft into Japan's territorial water and airspace.
On August 2, Chinese vessels set a record of 111-straight days of incursions. They would still be around the Senkakus today, except they fled to avoid Typhoon No. 4. In May and June, China chased away Japanese fishing boats that were in Japan's territorial waters....
