Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/japan-china-airspace-disputed-islands-3b2552ecc23e49131bbe88d19824396b
In the disputed territory around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, both Japan and China have accused each other of violating their territorial airspace. Japan lodges this accusation after a Chinese coast guard ship entered its territorial waters and launched a helicopter that violated their airspace for 15 minutes. China lodged their accusation after a Japanese civilian aircraft entered their airspace at around the same time. Both countries have urged the other to take preventative action to ensure further violations of territorial airspace do not occur, but no other meaningful action has been taken. Violations of Japanese territorial waters and airspace around the islands are not uncommon for China, incidents such as these have happened before on multiple occasions.
Disputes over both the East China Sea and the South China Sea have been going on for some time now. China, Japan, and Taiwan all claim some sort of ownership over the islands in the East China Sea, and, in the South China Sea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei all contest China’s broad claims over the territory. China’s interest in these territories are both economic and strategic. The East China Sea and South China Sea are said to be home to a number of untapped natural resources such as minerals, gas, and oil that could prove beneficial for China’s economy. Further, asserting control over these islands will allow China to increase their security, creating a buffer zone to protect them from invasion — especially from a country like Japan that has historically had imperialist ambitions and now has stronger ties with the U.S.
There is, of course, no simple resolution to any disputes over ownership of territory. Each country involved has a vested interest in controlling the territorial waters, airspace, and islands of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, either for their own economic purposes or for the sake of lessening China’s control over the region. On the other hand, no state wants the tensions caused by these disputes to explode into military conflict or even just worsen relations amidst otherwise unifying threats like the U.S. tariffs. This likely leaves us with each of these countries — and especially the more powerful ones such as Japan and China — gradually trying to exert more power over each other to coerce the other to give up the territories, with no clear winner until a peaceful agreement is reached (unlikely) or a country develops some sort of edge in negotiations that forces the rest to concede.
This story drives home the point that international law — in this case, the laws regarding EEZs, international waters, and state sovereignty — is not, in practice, internationally agreed upon and is near impossible to effectively enforce. An ICJ case about ownership of the South China Sea between China and the Philippines actually ruled in favor of the Philippines, for instance, but China simply refused to acknowledge the ruling.