Recently obtained documents confirm suspicions that Chinese President Xi Jinping himself is personally involved in ordering the military operations agitati
TAIPEI – Recently obtained documents confirm suspicions that Chinese President Xi Jinping himself is personally involved in ordering the military operations agitating Japan in the East China Sea.
China’s surging military activity in the East China Sea has caused deep anxiety for Japan, which administers the Senkaku Islands. The uninhabited isles near Taiwan are also claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu, and Taiwan, which calls them Tiaoyutai.
According to the documents, recently obtained by Kyodo News, during a closed-door meeting with members of the Central Military Commission, which is in overall charge of the People’s Liberation Army, on Feb. 20 this year, Xi, supreme commander of the world’s largest military, said “some countries have conducted frequent maritime drills in the area seeking to provoke and pressure us.”
“Yet our military has regularized patrols in the air and on the sea with a series of military operations deep into the East China Sea and Diaoyu Islands to safeguard our interest in territorial sovereignty,” he added.
Such military operations have proven that “if our strategy is appropriate and our actions are pro-active, we could seize an opportunity and even turn a crisis into an opportunity,” he is quoted as saying.
Statistics show that China’s military exercises in the East China Sea are becoming increasingly routine and that their frequency and scale have grown.
In fiscal 2016 ended in March, Japan scrambled fighter jets 1,168 times to intercept approaching aircraft, breaking the Cold War record, according to the Defense Ministry.
Last year, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry began publicizing news, and sometimes photos, of scrambles executed by its air force to counter China’s increasing military activity.
