Japan’s Defense Ministry revealed on Monday that its forces had been tracking the movements of two Chinese warships, which spent more than a week patrolling waters frequented by the United States and its allies.
The Chinese navy frigates Zhoushan and Jingzhou sailed out of the East China Sea on March 2 via the Miyako Strait, between Japan’s Miyako and Okinawa islands, before cruising from March 3-14 about 110 miles south of Ishikagi island, said the report by the Joint Staff of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.
The naval deployment beyond the so-called first island chain—illustrated in Newsweek‘s map—concluded on March 15, when the pair returned via the waters between Japan’s westernmost inhabited island of Yonaguni and Taiwan, which is less than 70 miles away.
Japan said it dispatched a Maritime Self-Defense Force P-3 Orion aircraft to monitor the maneuvers.
The latest disclosure out of Tokyo paints a broader picture of recent Chinese military moves in the Western Pacific, particularly in the marginal Philippine Sea, where the U.S. Navy and its allied counterparts regularly conduct naval drills.
The presence of the Zhoushan and the Jingzhou—Type 054A vessels also known by the NATO reporting name Jiangkai II—overlapped with additional Chinese military deployments to the area this month, including a KQ-200 maritime patrol aircraft’s sortie via the Miyako Strait on March 9-10, according to Japanese defense data.
Japan Joint Staff
And on March 12, a pair of Chinese air force H-6 strategic bombers and a Chinese navy Y-9 electronic intelligence aircraft flew the same route during a long-range patrol, Japan’s Joint Staff said.
The Zhoushan and the Jingzhou are both assigned to the East Sea Fleet, part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, which did not disclose any recent joint forces exercises in the Pacific.
China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The increased frequency of activity suggests Beijing’s forces may soon embark on planned springtime exercises, which typically begin in the weeks following the Lunar New Year holidays in late January or early February.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said its fighter jets were scrambled 21 times last month to prevent possible airspace violations by Chinese and Russian planes. The number was low compared with last April, when Japanese fighter aircraft were scrambled 94 times in a single month, according to official data.
U.S. forces have remained active in the region since the start of the year, conducting major defense drills with treaty allies Japan and South Korea in recent weeks.
U.S. Naval Institute-run USNI News, which publishes a regular fleet tracker, said that the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was in port in Japan’s Yokosuka naval base, while the USS America, which leads an expeditionary strike group, was docked in Okinawa.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.