China’s coast guard patrolled Japan-held islands almost daily last year as tensions flare

China’s coast guard patrolled Japan-administered islands ‍in the East China Sea almost daily last year, it said on ​Friday, aiming to secure its sovereignty over the remote, rocky ‌outpost and to deter Taiwan from taking steps ​toward independence.

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The patrols near the tiny islands — known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China — could add to tensions as Beijing and Tokyo are embroiled in their biggest diplomatic dispute in more than a decade after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan might intervene if China attacked Taiwan.

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China claims democratically governed ​Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced use of ⁠force to “reunify” with the island. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claim and says only the island’s people can decide their own fate.

China’s coast guard patrolled the ​Senkaku/Diaoyu for 357 days last year, ⁠coast guard head Zhang Jianming told a press briefing on maritime law enforcement. Over the past five years, it organised 134 patrols and deployed 550,000 vessels and 6,000 aircraft around the ‌islands, Mr. Zhang said.

Reuters reported in May that Beijing appeared ‌to be stepping up coast guard and naval activity in waters including the East China Sea, in an ‍attempt to reinforce dominance in the region.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu lie within the strategic first island chain stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the ‍Philippines. The string of islands is controlled by U.S. allies and contains the expansion of China’s growing naval power.

The last major maritime dispute was in 2010, when Japan’s coast guard detained the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese vessels near the islands, sparking a diplomatic crisis.

Tensions flared again in 2012 when the Japanese government announced it had bought some of the disputed islets ⁠from their private Japanese owners. China sent patrol ships in response.

The most recent confrontation in the area came ​last month, when China said it had expelled an “illegal” Japanese fishing vessel ⁠from the waters around the islands, while Japan said it had intercepted and expelled two Chinese coast guard ships that were approaching the vessel.

Tokyo has since begun encouraging fishermen to avoid the islands in an effort not to further ⁠inflame tensions, Reuters reported. Japan declined to comment.