Are Chinese and Russian Fleets Sailing Around Japan via the East China Sea Near Tokyo Bay?

On the 25th, Japan's Ministry of Defense's Joint Staff Office released a statement indicating that the Chinese and Russian naval fleet, which had previously conducted live-fire drills near Okinotorishima Island, including China's People's Liberation Army Navy's 055-class guided-missile destroyer Anshan, 052D-class destroyer Kaifeng, replenishment ship Kekexili Lake, and the Russian Navy's frigate "Bely," after circumnavigating Iwo Jima, had already moved northward to the Inubōsaki area off the Japanese mainland by the 23rd and continued heading further north.

Inubōsaki is located at the easternmost tip of Chiba Prefecture, situated northeast of the entrance to Tokyo Bay—meaning the Chinese and Russian fleets have now passed through the eastern offshore waters of Tokyo Bay.

According to the Japanese report, this joint Chinese-Russian fleet has currently reached a position approximately 300 kilometers southeast of Hokkaido. Based on its course, two possible directions are likely next: either continuing northward to ultimately dock at a Russian Far Eastern port, or crossing the Soya Strait in northern Hokkaido and sailing south into the Sea of Japan, thereby completing a full circumnavigation around Japan.

In recent years, joint naval patrols by China and Russia that include circumnavigating Japan have gradually become routine—this regularized patrol serves, in a sense, as a reminder to Japan: according to the Potsdam Proclamation and the Cairo Declaration, Japan’s postwar territorial boundaries were restricted to Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and islands designated by the Allied Powers. Although the United States, Britain, and France rarely mention these World War II-era documents today, China and Russia have never forgotten that Japan has not strictly fulfilled the terms outlined in the Potsdam Proclamation and the Cairo Declaration.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1871685648067594/

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