Plans Made For Defense Hotline With China

The Chinese and Japanese governments have agreed to establish a defense hotline as part of efforts to prevent clashes, reports Radio Free Asia.

Earlier this week, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said that the hotline would begin operating in the spring of 2023 and would “play an extremely important role in building confidence and avoiding unexpected contingencies,” according to Japanese media.

The sides launched a maritime and aerial communication mechanism in 2018 to prevent accidental clashes but little progress toward direct communications had been made until now.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to accelerate the process during last month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok.

The move comes amid growing tensions over Chinese “gray zone” tactics, in which Beijing seeks to employ “low-intensity conflicts” to change the status quo in the maritime domain, according to the China Security Report 2023 from Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies think tank, which is linked to the defense ministry.

Chinese and Japanese vessels regularly confront each other around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.