Chinese Radar on Oil Platform

There are a few news outlets that picked up a story about China putting radars on their deep water oil and gas platforms.  It seems likely that they are not just talking about weather radar, since other things are going on as well.  There are Chinese ships and airplanes intruding into territory around the Senkakus Is, which I wrote about 5 years ago in my first book.  These islands are hardly the kind of place anyone would want to live, but even then there were fishing vessels and Chinese coast guard ships in that area.

If you want to see them, see the Wall Street Journal article at http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-pings-beijing-over-radar-in-east-china-sea-1470570816, or for a look at where they are off the coast of Taiwan go to Google at https://www.google.com/search?q=senkakus+google+maps&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS669US669&oq=Senkakus&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l3.8688j0j7&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
They are closer to China than some of the other islands like the Spratly chain, but China and Japan both claim them.  This is not like having friendly discussions about a fence in the back yard;  these two fought for several years before WW II actually started, and they haven't exactly been friends since then.  There are still plenty of people alive who remember that war, so that feeling is not going away very fast.

So, the Japanese have protested the placement of those radars on these platforms - formally protested, as in embassy-to-embassy kinds of protests.  This was similar to what the US did when Chinese ships were making their way around the Spratly Islands, now heavily militarized outposts.  Speaking to a Chinese embassy will probably get no reaction from the Chinese, and they will probably not take the radars off the platforms.  Then, Japan, as the Philippines and Vietnam before it, will have to send some military ships into the area, which will not get the radars off the platforms either.  Short of sending a boarding party up to one of these things, which is tricky, there is very little anyone can do.

We have to give the Chinese a nice hand for their ingenuity.  They militarize the areas of ocean that they can, and link those together into an aircraft identification zone. All the while, they say they are just doing what any country would do to protect its territory.  They may also say, "Disregard that finding that says we don't own those islands," but that is really the point isn't it?  China continues to act like they own it, and think the world will come around to their way of thinking if they just keep saying they own it and making up protests over anyone who says something contrary.  It will take years to find out if they are right or wrong, but I wouldn't bet against them.