The US would welcome a move by Japan to extend air patrols into the South China Sea as a counterweight to a growing fleet of Chinese vessels pushing Beijing’s territorial claims in the region, a senior US Navy officer said.
Currently, regular patrols by Japanese aircraft only reach into the East China Sea, where Tokyo is at loggerheads with Beijing over disputed islands. Extending surveillance flights into the South China Sea will almost certainly increase tensions between the world’s second and third-largest economies.
“I think allies, partners and friends in the region will look to the Japanese more and more as a stabilizing function,” Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the Seventh Fleet and the top US navy officer in Asia, said in an interview.
“In the South China Sea, frankly, the Chinese fishing fleet, the Chinese coast guard and the [navy] overmatch their neighbors,” Thomas said.
China’s foreign ministry said it had no immediate comment on the interview.
Thomas’s comments show Pentagon support for a key element of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for a more active military role in the region. That is crucial because US and Japanese officials are now negotiating new bilateral security guidelines expected to give Japan a bigger role in the alliance, 70 years after the end of World War II.
“I think that JSDF [Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces] operations in the South China Sea makes sense in the future,” Thomas said.
Japan is not party to the dispute in the South China Sea where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims. However, the waterway provides 10 percent of the global fisheries catch and carries US$5 trillion in ship-borne trade, a large portion of which is to and from Japan.
Abe is pushing for legislation later this year that would allow Japan’s military to operate more freely overseas as part of a broader interpretation of the self-defense allowed by its pacifist constitution.
Those changes coincide with the deployment of a new Japanese maritime patrol plane, the P-1, with a range of 8,000km. That is double the range of current aircraft and could allow Japan to push surveillance deep into the South China Sea.
“This is a logical outgrowth of Abe’s push for a more robust and proactive military. It is also a substantial departure from JSDF’s customary operations,” said Grant Newsham, a research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and a former US Marine liaison officer to Japan’s military.
Newsham said sending surveillance aircraft to the South China Sea would allow Japan to deepen its military ties with nations like the Philippines, one of Abe’s goals to counter China’s growing naval power.
Beijing has outlined the scope of its claims, with reference to a so-called nine-dash line that takes in about 90 percent of the South China Sea on Chinese maps.
“The alleged nine dash line, which doesn’t comport with international rules and norms, standards, laws, creates a situation down there, which is unnecessary friction,” Thomas said.
The Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) near the Philippines is one flashpoint in the South China Sea. Manila has complained that China has kept its fishermen from fishing in the waters around the shoal. Thomas said Japan could aid the Philippines with equipment and training.
“For the Philippines, the issue is one of capacity. For the Japanese that is a perfect niche for them to help, not just in equipment, but in training and operations,” he said.
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