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Japan reaffirmed on Tuesday its opposition to “attempts to change the status quo by force” in the South and East China Sea.
Principal Deputy Director Hideki Yazawa of the Japan Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau said in an online briefing on his country’s activities to mark 50 years of cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
“Japan always takes very [seriously] the attempts to change the status quo by force in the South China Sea or East China Sea or anywhere in the world. So we look at it very carefully, but for the moment, we don’t have concrete parts of the program for this area,” he said.
Japan is involved in a territorial tug-of-war with China over East China Sea islets.
Yazawa said stressed that Japan “opposes, always, any attempt to change the status quo” in the disputed territories.
