Japan frees crew of 'illegal' Chinese fishing boat

Japan has released the captain and crew of a Chinese fishing boat who were arrested last week on suspicion of illegally fishing in Japanese waters.

The 100-tonne boat with 13 crew members had been fishing for coral near Miyako island in the Okinawa chain.
They were about 150km (95 miles) from a group of islands at the centre of a dispute between Japan and China.

The crew were released on Sunday after the Chinese consulate paid their bail, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
Xinhua said the boat, the Qiong Yang Pu F8139, had set sail for China late on Sunday with all its crew on board.

Coast Guard official Yasuhiko Oku said the captain had admitted being inside Japan's exclusive economic zone when he was stopped on Saturday, the Associated Press reports.
The incident came amid high tensions between Japan and China over the disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan, which controls them, and the Diaoyu in China.

The dispute over their ownership has been rumbling for years, but it reignited in 2012 when the Japanese government purchased three of the islands from their private Japanese owner.
Shortly before the Chinese crew were arrested, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had vowed to defend Japan against Chinese "provocation".

With Burma in mind, China quietly supports Wa rebels

China wants Myanmar to become a communist ruled failed satellite state like Nepal, North Korea.

Chinese external spy agency Ministry of State Security [MSS] involved so that Chinese government can maintain a degree of deniability

While Burma’s military steps up battles against Kachin rebels along the border with China, security analysts say Beijing has been quietly selling advanced weapons to another insurgent group on its border, the United Wa State Army. The Wa are the largest militia in Burma and considered the biggest narcotics dealing organization in Southeast Asia.Burma’s military airstrikes and mortar attacks on Kachin rebels in recent weeks raised international concerns about the government’s peace efforts. The heavy fighting in Burma’s north is the worst since a 17-year cease-fire with the Kachin Independence Army broke down in 2011.
But while China calls for military restraint in Kachin state, security analysts say Beijing has been secretly arming another rebel group, the United Wa State Army.
In a December report, IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review says China last year provided the Wa with advanced weapons to build up their defenses. The transfers included surface to air missiles and, for the first time, at least 12 armored vehicles the report refers to as “tank destroyers.”
Thailand-based security analyst and author of the report, Anthony Davis, said Beijing is trying to balance historic camaraderie with the Wa and its relations with Burmese authorities.
“The Chinese cannot afford to ignore the ethnic forces along their border, nor at the same time can they afford to ignore the central government,” Davis said. “Is that to say that China is directly supplying that equipment? No, it’s not. Clearly the supplier of that equipment is known to senior elements in the government, but that is not to say that they are directly involved in financing. They need to maintain a degree of deniability here,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review report.
The Wa are Burma’s largest rebel group, estimated at up to 30,000 full and part-time fighters. Despite its professed policy of non-interference, military analysts say China has long been the largest supplier of weapons to the Wa, albeit unofficially.
The Wa were one of several ethnic militias that formed after the 1989 breakup of the Burmese Communist Party.
Beijing directly supported the communists and maintained relations with the newly formed rebel groups.
Yale University Ph. D. candidate Josh Gordon said China has been particularly close with the Wa, who speak Chinese. The Wa are more or less a proxy of China, said Gordon.

“You’ll use Chinese money, Chinese cell phones, Chinese electricity for in large part, where there is electricity in the urban areas, and have connection to the Chinese Internet,” he said.
Burma signed a cease-fire with the Wa in the 1990s and allowed them to govern their own territory in northeastern Shan state. They turned it into one of Asia’s largest methamphetamine production bases and are considered the region’s largest drug-dealing organization.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in 2011 put most-wanted pictures of Wa leader Wei Hsueh Kang in Thailand’s entertainment venues.

Despite the recent escalation in Chinese weapons transfers to the Wa, Davis said Beijing is not trying to destabilize the border area. Instead, China is sending a message to Burmese authorities not to even think about attempting in Wa territory what they are doing in Kachin state where local groups are fighting Burmese forces, he said.
“The Chinese are not stoking fires in Northern Burma. By reinforcing the Wa they are reinforcing a military deterrent. If you like, they are reinforcing peace and stability which has existed for the last 20 years in a manner that’s been favorable to China.”

During past decades of military rule and western sanctions, China held great sway over Burma and its natural resources. But since Burma’s reform-minded President Thein Sein took office, and sanctions were suspended, China’s influence is being thrown off balance.
Davis said the weapons tranfers to the Wa appear to be China responding to its political reversals.
Ye Htut, a spokesman for Burma’s president, declined to comment on the report by IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review.

“We don’t have any information on that,” he said. “But, every time the Chinese government assures us they will not interfere in our internal affairs. So we accept their assurance.”
China this month sent a high-level military delegation to Burma to discuss border security issues and the fighting in Kachin state. The official New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the Chinese agreed not to interfere with Burma’s internal problems.

China transfers 11 PLA Navy warships to marine surveillance

China has transferred two destroyers and nine other ex-navy vessels to its maritime surveillance fleet, reports said Monday, as it moves to beef up its position in bitter territorial rows with Japan and other neighbors.

Beijing renovated the ships and transferred them to surveillance operations to “alleviate the insufficiency of vessels used to protect maritime interests,” said a report on Tencent, one of China’s major news portals.

China is embroiled in a maritime dispute with Japan that has seen tensions between the two Asian giants, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, at times reach fever pitch.

It is also engaged in a simmering row with its southern neighbors over its claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea.

Beijing has been sending maritime patrol vessels into waters around the East China Sea islands — which it claims as the Diaoyu and which Japan controls and calls the Senkaku — since Tokyo nationalized the chain in September.

China is apparently seeking to prove it can come and go in the area at will and on Monday three of Beijing’s ships were spotted in the waters around the islands, according to Japan’s coastguard, in the latest perceived incursion.


Two of Beijing’s newly refurbished vessels are destroyers, with one each to operate in the East and South China Seas, with the others including tugs, icebreakers and survey ships, according to the Tencent report.

The destroyers, the Nanjing and Nanning, numbered 131 and 162 respectively, each had a displacement of 3,250 metric tons and had a top speed of 32 knots, according to sinodefence.com, an independent UK-based website.

It said that during their time in the navy they were equipped with 130mm guns with a range of 29 kilometers, anti-ship missiles and other weapons.

The Nanjing went into service in 1977 and the Nanning in 1979. Both retired this year from the Chinese navy, previous domestic media reports said.

It was not clear whether it was the first time the maritime surveillance fleet has acquired destroyers, or when the transfers took place.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment when asked about the destroyers at its regular briefing on Monday.

Officials at the Ministry of Defense and headquarters of the China Marine Surveillance were not immediately available to comment when contacted by AFP.

The transfer report was first published in the International Herald Leader, a Chinese-language newspaper linked to Beijing’s official news agency Xinhua, and the author said the operation had been given significantly more capacity.

“The maritime surveillance team’s power has been greatly strengthened and its capacity to execute missions sharply improved, providing a fundamental guarantee for completing the currently arduous task to protect maritime interests,” wrote Yu Zhirong, of the government’s Research Center for Chinese Marine Development.

Since 2000 the maritime surveillance fleet, which is tasked with “protecting China’s interests and executing law enforcement missions,” has also received a total of 13 new vessels, the report said.

Daily patrols have been stepped up from six vessels before the disputes heated up to “more than 10” Yu said, adding authorities planned to build another 36 surveillance ships by 2015.

A Chinese plane overflew the islands in the East China Sea earlier this month, in what Japan said was the first time Beijing had breached its airspace since at least 1958. Tokyo scrambled fighter jets in response.

China says its plane harassed by Japanese military aircraft

We all along knew about the "peaceful" rise of China

 A government spokesman confirmed on Thursday that a Chinese maritime surveillance plane was harassed by Japanese military aircraft while patrolling airspace near the Diaoyu Islands.

Japan's action was meant to escalate the situation and it should bear the consequences, said Shi Qingfeng, spokesman for the State Oceanic Administration (SOA).

Shi said the Chinese plane was conducting a routine patrol in airspace over the East China Sea about 150 km away from the Diaoyu Islands.

Shi said the flight route used by the plane has been used by Chinese surveillance planes since 2007.

"The Japanese side's disturbance was intended to cause confusion and distort the truth," Shi said. ;)

Chinese ships enter Japanese waters near disputed islands

Will this trigger off a Sino-Japanese war ?

Three Chinese ships entered into Japanese territorial water near the disputed Senkaku Islands on Friday morning and were staying despite a warning from a Japanese Coast Guard ship, the coast guard said.

The move continues a dispute between the nations that stretches back decades.

Last week, Japan scrambled fighter jets near the small islands in the East China Sea after a Chinese plane was seen there.

Chinese government ships have repeatedly entered the waters around the remote, rocky islands since the Japanese government announced in September it was buying several of the islands from private owners.

Japanese Coast Guard vessels have engaged in games of cat and mouse with the Chinese ships, with both sides broadcasting messages to one another insisting they have territorial sovereignty over the area.

Analysts say that by sending its own patrols into the area, China is challenging Japan's de facto control of the islands, which has been the status quo for the past 40 years.

Japan scrambles jets as Chinese plane flies over disputed isles

Chinese plane which entered Japanese territory.

TOKYO: Japan scrambled fighter jets on Thursday after a Chinese government plane entered what Japan considers its airspace over disputed islets in the East China Sea, escalating tension between Asia’s two biggest economies.

Japan protested to China over the incident but China brushed the complaint off saying the flight by the Chinese aircraft was “completely normal”.

Sino-Japanese relations took a tumble in September after Japan bought the tiny islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, from a private Japanese owner.

Patrol ships from the two countries have been shadowing each other since then in a standoff that has raised concern that a collision could escalate into a clash. Thursday’s incident was the first time both sides used aircraft in the dispute.

“Despite our repeated warnings, Chinese government ships have entered our territorial waters for three days in an row,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osama Fujimura told reporters.

“It is extremely regrettable that, on top of that, an intrusion into our airspace has been committed in this way,” he said, adding that Japan had formally protested through diplomatic channels.

Japan’s military scrambled eight F-15 fighter jets, the Defence Ministry said. Japanese officials later said the Chinese aircraft had left the area.

It was the first time a Chinese aircraft had intruded into Japan’s airspace near the disputed islands, Japan’s Defence Ministry said.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda later instructed the government to be “all the more on guard”, the Kyodo news agency reported.

China’s state maritime agency said a marine surveillance plane had joined four Chinese vessels patrolling around the islands and the fleet had ordered Japanese boats to leave the area immediately.

“The Diaoyu islands and affiliated islands are part of China’s inherent territory. China’s flight over the islands is completely normal,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a briefing in Beijing. Japanese analysts said it was a significant escalation.

“This is serious ... intrusion into Japan’s airspace is a very important step to erode Japan’s effective control over the area,” said Kazuya Sakamoto, a professor at Osaka University. “If China sends a military plane as a next step, that would really make Japan’s control precarious.” Toshiyuki Shikata, a Teikyo University professor and a retired general, said the use of aircraft by both sides was significant. “Something accidental is more likely to happen with planes than with ships,” he said.

The incident comes just days before a Japanese election that is expected to return to power the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) with hawkish former prime minister Shinzo Abe at the helm.

Abe has vowed to take a tough stance in the dispute over the islands, which are near potentially huge maritime gas reserves, and has said that the ruling Democratic Party’s mishandling of its diplomacy had emboldened China. Abe has also promised to boost spending on defence including on the coastguard. Smaller Asian countries such as the Philippines have also become increasingly worried about Beijing’s growing military assertiveness and its claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea.