Japan protests against ‘unacceptable’ route taken by China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier
The warship and two destroyer escorts passed close to outlying Japanese territory en route to the Pacific
Tokyo has lodged a protest with Beijing after a PLA aircraft carrier took a new route to the Pacific Ocean that brought it close to its outlying islands.
The two islands are Japan’s southwestern most isles. Yonaguni is 110km (68 miles) from Taiwan’s east coast, and 150km south of the Diaoyu, or Senkaku islands, the cause of a long-running territorial dispute between China and Japan.
A contiguous zone is the area between 12 to 24 nautical miles (22-44km) from a country’s coast and where it has limited control over areas such as customs, immigration and sanitation.
However, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and other international laws, these zones are generally considered to be international waters where foreign vessels are allowed to pass.
“This incident is totally unacceptable from the perspective of the security environment of Japan and the region, and we have expressed our serious concerns to the Chinese side through diplomatic channels,” Japanese government spokesman Hiroshi Moriya said on Wednesday.
