The Mainichi Daily News, 25 January 2012

BEIJING (Kyodo) — A Chinese maritime surveillance aircraft based in Shanghai will expand their area of coverage this year to include waters of the East China Sea disputed with Japan, according to local media.

The reports quote officials of the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration as saying the twin-engine Harbin Y-12 plane’s range now includes China’s territorial waters as well as what the country claims as its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.

That encompasses the disputed territory known as the Senkaku Islands to the Japanese and as Diaoyu to the Chinese, as well as areas between the two countries where China has been unilaterally developing natural gas deposits to the consternation of the Japanese.

Under the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, countries are entitled to claim 200 nautical miles from their shores as their EEZs. But the EEZs claimed by China and Japan overlap.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry’s latest white paper, China has been expanding and intensifying its maritime activities in waters near Japan in recent years, with its ships engaging in intelligence-gathering activities as well as monitoring activities for the protection of maritime rights and interests.

“Attention needs to be paid,” it said, “to the operation of (Chinese) naval vessels and various surveillance operations near Japan” as well as China’s “development of facilities that serve as bases for these activities.”

The Japanese white paper covering 2011 noted that China’s military has defined, in its own 2010 defense white paper, the safeguarding of national maritime rights and interests as one of the major goals and tasks of the country’s defense policy.

It also pointed out that China practices an administration system of sharing responsibilities between the military and the local authorities, including organs of maritime surveillance, in border and coastal defense.

(Mainichi Japan) January 25, 2012

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120125p2g00m0dm006000c.html