By Shannon Tiezzi
A decline in Chinese naval patrols coupled with less heated rhetoric may signal China is ready to work with Japan.
Over at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, M. Taylor Fravel and Alastair Iain Johnston performed a data analysis on the frequency of Chinese coast guard patrols near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. They found that since October 2013 there has been a remarkable drop in the frequency of Chinese patrols in the Senkaku/Diaoyu territorial waters, defined as the area within 12 nautical miles of the islands. Before October 2013, Fravel and Johnston write, “China conducted as many as four patrols per week within the islands’ territorial waters … [Since October 2013], the frequency of patrols has dropped and maintained a fairly steady average of about one patrol into the 12-mile zone every couple of weeks.”
Fravel and Johnston also noted that China’s patrols into the less-sensitive “contiguous zone” (between 12 and 24 nautical miles from the islands) “dropped significantly after October 2013.” Patrols of these areas are less fraught with meaning, as the contiguous zone is not a part of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands’s territorial waters. Accordingly, Chinese patrols in this less-provocative area are more frequent than incursions into the actual territorial waters.
Fravel and Johnston cautioned that “we are reluctant to infer too much about China’s bargaining strategies from these data alone.” Still, they raise the hypothesis that the reduction in patrol frequencies might “signal a willingness not to escalate further.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat