Japanese and Americans conducted military exercises Tuesday joint air, in a tense situation because of the territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo about a small archipelago in the East China Sea.
These exercises, which take place from Monday off the island of Shikoku, the fourth largest of the Japanese archipelago, involving six U.S. side FA-18 fighters and 90 soldiers and four fighters F-4 and a number indeterminate staff Japanese side.
They work one month after the landslide victory in the legislative elections of December 16 Conservative Shinzo Abe, who immediately closed the door to any negotiations with Beijing on the fate of the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan but claimed by China forcefully under the name Diaoyu.
Abe parallel affirmed its commitment to strengthening the strategic relationship with the United States, after three years of vacillation and friction with Washington during the reign of the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ 2009-2012)
Last Sunday, the Self-Defense Forces of Japan (SDF) for the first time conducted a highly revealing exercise climate: reclaiming an island occupied by an enemy force, with 300 men and twenty aircraft and helicopters .
Last October, Japan and the United States had given a similar exercise style simulating a landing on an island occupied apparently not to offend China.
The new government in Tokyo, led by Shinzo Abe, reputed to be a hawk on foreign policy, nothing seems determined to release in Beijing on this issue.
For four months, Beijing officials regularly sends vessels in the territorial waters of the Senkaku to show its determination to recover these islands are constantly monitored by the buildings of the Japanese Coast Guard.
A twin-engine Chinese also flew over the archipelago on December 13, causing almost immediate take-off of Japanese fighters.
On Thursday, China also scrambled two fighter planes to counter two F-15 fighters themselves Japanese patrol aircraft followed a Chinese East China Sea.
Beijing has taken another step Tuesday by announcing that China would conduct a topographical survey of the islands.
The New China News Agency did not specify if this study imply that Chinese officials are trying to get physically archipelago discord.
These fall within topographical mapping program in stages islands and reefs of China, said the Chinese official news agency. They aim to defend the maritime rights and interests of China.
The dispute over the Senkaku / Diaoyu, strategically located off Taiwan escalated in September after the nationalization of some of the islands of Japan.
Of anti-Japanese demonstrations, sometimes violent, lasted one week around China.
Since then, bilateral relations are at their lowest, so that, for example, Beijing canceled events that were to mark September 29 on the fortieth anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two countries.
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