China

China has long-standing historical memory and extensive claims in the East China Sea, where it is engaged in a bitter dispute with Japan over sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu and the delineation of maritime boundaries - exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf - between the two countries. Long relatively stable, the situation has degraded considerably over the past fifteen years as Beijing acquired the means to unilaterally alter the status quo. At the turn of the 2010s, Beijing’s ‘assertive turn’ translated into a much more proactive - if not aggressive - posture in the East China Sea, as China started leveraging its Maritime Law Enforcement Agencies and Coast Guard to progressively erode Japan’s position around the disputed islands - with the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s brand new ships casting a long shadow. While Japan has borne the brunt of Chinese coercion in the area, Chinese ships and aircraft have also been used to intimidate less local stakeholders, most notably the United States. The East China Sea has yet to become a ‘Chinese lake’, but Beijing has already imposed a de facto co-administration of the waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu, while the repeated incursions of Chinese aircraft into Japan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) have created a new normal in the air. As China continues its rise, the equilibrium in the East China Sea is likely to continue to shift in Beijing’s favor, further consolidating the status of this maritime space as a major flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific region.