Asia Defense | Security | East Asia

China’s Live-Fire Drill Near Okinotorishima Tests Japan’s Maritime Nerves

The exercise highlights growing China-Russia naval interoperability while exposing competing interpretations of maritime law.

Okinotorishima, the small feature that is Japan’s southernmost territory.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense said on July 21 that a Chinese naval vessel had conducted a machine-gun firing exercise two days earlier inside Japan’s claimed EEZ in the Pacific. It was first time the ministry has publicly announced a case involving a foreign warship conducting a live-fire exercise inside Japan’s EEZ.

According to the Joint Staff, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force detected three Chinese vessels – the Type 055 (Renhai-class) destroyer Anshan, the Type 052D (Luyang III-class) destroyer Kaifeng, and the Type 903A replenishment ship Kekexilihu – and the Russian Navy’s Steregushchiy-class frigate Rezkiy sailing northeast about 330 kilometers southwest of Okinotorishima, Japan’s southernmost territory. The Joint Staff later confirmed that the Kaifeng conducted the machine-gun firing roughly 180 kilometers southwest of the island, squarely inside Japan’s EEZ. 

The same four ships had passed southward between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island on July 16.

An overview map of Chinese and Russian naval vessel movements. The red arrow indicates the movements of Chinese and Russian naval vessels, while the red dot marks the location where a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a machine-gun firing exercise on July 19. Map via Japan’s Joint Staff Office, Ministry of Defense.

The Chinese destroyer radioed nearby vessels shortly before the drill to announce its location and duration, a transmission the MSDF destroyer Samidare, on monitoring duty, picked up. Tokyo lodged a diplomatic protest, arguing the exercise could endanger nearby shipping.

The key point is that Japan did not allege a violation of international law. The firing occurred well beyond Japan’s 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, in waters Tokyo regards as part of its EEZ, and no damage to vessels was reported. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an EEZ grants coastal states sovereign rights over natural resources, not full sovereignty over all activity within it. Foreign militaries generally retain freedom of navigation there, and military exercises in another state’s EEZ are not automatically unlawful – a principle the United States and other maritime powers rely on, even as China has long pressed for greater coastal state control over foreign military activity in waters it claims as its own.

That makes Beijing’s response here somewhat ironic. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian dismissed Japan’s protest as groundless and accused Tokyo of exaggerating external threats to justify its own military buildup. He also revived China’s long-standing argument that Okinotorishima is a rock, not an island capable of generating an EEZ under UNCLOS Article 121. Japan has reinforced Okinotorishima with concrete to preserve its claim to islet status.

The legal disagreement therefore runs deeper than the question of whether military exercises are permissible in another state’s EEZ. Beijing rejects Japan’s entitlement to an EEZ around Okinotorishima altogether, arguing that the surrounding waters are part of the high seas and that China’s activities there are fully consistent with international law and customary international practice. At the same time, China is invoking a permissive interpretation of naval freedom that it typically resists when the United States and its allies conduct military operations in the South China........

© The Diplomat