Reassuring and Unnerving Japan } 723
pumping gas, shortly after Tokyo had granted a Japanese company rights to
test drill in Chunxiao, and two days before a general election in Japan.^32
Parallel to the East China Sea territorial dispute, a low-profile but strategi-
cally significant contest over PLA-N access to the seas beyond China’s first
island chain was underway.^33 The first observed passage of a PLA-N vessel
through a Japanese strait in recent years came in 2000, when a Chinese ice-
breaker and intelligence gathering ship transited the Tsugami Strait between
Hokkaido and Honshu to reach the high Pacific. Five more transits (con-
firmed and unconfirmed) occurred through late 2008. PLA-N vessels were
believed to be scouting the seas east of Japan where combat might someday
occur. Another component of the escalating naval rivalry had to do with
whether PLA-N submarines could transit various Japanese-controlled straits
submerged. UNCLOS permitted submerged passage in “international straits”
but not other straits. Japan recognizes only five “international straits” among
its many intra-archipelagic straits. China counts many more and insists on
upholding rights of submerged passage by PLA-N submarines. Japan tries
to force Chinese subs to access the high Pacific only by recognized—and
presumably well-monitored—international straits. What were involved in
these cat and mouse interactions were the capabilities of PLA-N submarines
and JMSDF anti-submarine forces to conduct operations on Japan’s SLOCs
between the first and second island chains. From Japan’s perspective, the PLA
was tightening its hold on Japan’s vital SLOCs.
A typical incident occurred in November 2004, when JMSDF ships forced
a PLA submarine in Japan’s territorial waters near Tarama Jima (shown ear-
lier in Figure 26-4) in the southern Ryukyus to surface and display its flag.
The Chinese sub then exited the area escorted by JMSDF helicopters and
destroyers. Japan formally protested the incursion. After several days, China’s
MFA informed Japan that the intrusion was the result of a “technical error,”
and apologized for the accidental intrusion. That apology was not reported
by China’s media, thus sheltering the MFA from criticism for the decision
to apologize.^34 Japanese defense officials were skeptical of Beijing’s assertion
that the intrusion was accidental, noting that that had always been the ex-
cuse when Soviet aircraft and warships violated Japanese territory during the
Cold War. Japanese officials suspected that Chinese submarines were famil-
iarizing themselves with Japanese waters in preparation for possible combat
operations. When Hu Jintao and Koizumi met on the sidelines of an APEC
conference in Chile in November 2004, Hu called on Koizumi to stop visiting
the Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi responded by asking Hu to take preventive
measures to ensure that Chinese warships did not again “mistakenly” enter
Japan’s territorial waters.^35
Tension in the East China Sea eased as Hu Jintao’s foreign policy team
of Dai Bingguo and Wang Yi maneuvered toward improved relations with
Japan, culminating in Hu’s May 2008 visit to Japan. But after that brief