CNN: China Using Spratlys Onion-Peeling Tactic In Senkakus

For all the speculation of quick military action by China to achieve its foreign policy goals, Beijing’s track record has been more akin to peeling an onion, slowly and deliberately pulling back layers to reach a goal at the center.

Photo Insert: An aerial view of the Senkakus

Consider how Beijing built up and fortified islands in the South China Sea, finally building what the former commander of US Pacific Command dubbed a "Great Wall of SAMs" — surface-to-air missiles — on islands that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had pledged not to militarize years before.

Now, Beijing may be slowly peeling back the onion in another disputed island chain, the rocky, uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, administered by Japan and known as the Diaoyus in China.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, the Chinese Coast Guard and even naval ships have been spending record amounts of time in the waters around the Senkakus this year, Brad Lendon reported for CNN.

For the fourth time since 2016, a People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) frigate entered the waters surrounding the Senkakus earlier this week. A contiguous zone encompasses waters between islands that do not fall inside a nation's territorial waters' 12-nautical-mile limit.

Although the islands are uninhabited, there are economic interests involved, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The islands “have potential oil and natural gas reserves, are near prominent shipping routes, and are surrounded by rich fishing areas,” it says.

Tokyo claims the islands have historical significance. According to Japan's Foreign Ministry, the chain was incorporated into Japanese territory in 1895 after the government "carefully ascertained that there had been no trace of control over the Senkaku Islands by another state prior to that period."

On September 17, 1894, Japan defeated the better-armed but weakly-led Chinese naval fleet in the Battle of Yalu off the west coast of Korea. Eleven years later, the Japanese Imperial Navy destroyed the assaulting Russian fleet, killing the armada's commander.

At one point, about 200 Japanese people lived in the islands, further cementing Tokyo’s claims, and China did not challenge Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus for 75 years, it says.

“This changed in the 1970s, when significant attention was drawn to the islands due to the potential existence of the oil reserves in the East China Sea,” the ministry’s website argues, Junko Ogura also reported for CNN.

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