BEIJING — Japan has strongly protested a rare visit by a Chinese delegation to the Kuril Islands, a chain disputed by Russia and Japan, calling the trip "totally unacceptable." Analysts say the episode deals another blow to China-Japan ties, which have been frozen since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks last year about intervening in a Taiwan contingency. Russia detained a Japanese journalist on espionage charges the same day, in what analysts see as a sharper joint push by Beijing and Moscow to pressure Tokyo.
A delegation from China's Heilongjiang Province visited Iturup Island in the southern Kurils on the 13th to assess potential investment in fisheries farming and processing as well as tourism, Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao reported on the 15th. The group included local government officials and business executives. Russian media said it was the first official visit by a Chinese corporate delegation to the southern Kuril Islands.
Russia has exercised effective control over the southern Kurils since the end of World War II, but Japan claims four of the islands, including Iturup, as its own, referring to them as the Northern Territories. Japan's Foreign Ministry lodged immediate protests with both China and Russia through diplomatic channels that night. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said it was "totally unacceptable for officials or business figures from a third country to visit and conduct activities in the four northern islands in a manner that treats them as Russian territory."
China avoided a direct confrontation while distancing itself from Japan's claim. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the Heilongjiang delegation had "visited Russia's Sakhalin region, a friendly partner region, for exchange activities," and declined to comment on commercial activities by private companies. Responding to Japan's protest, she said the "outcomes of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War" — China's term for World War II — "must be respected and upheld."
China has historically maintained a neutral stance on the Russia-Japan territorial dispute. But some analysts read the latest move as Beijing drawing closer to Moscow as its conflict with Tokyo over Taiwan deepens. Lian Degui, director of the Japan Research Center at Shanghai International Studies University, said the visit had "a political background," adding that "if Japan does not respect China's sovereignty, it should not expect China to stay neutral on Japan's territorial disputes." Chen Yang, director of the Japan Research Center at Haiyizhu, offered a different view, saying the trip reflected continuing exchanges between Heilongjiang Province and Sakhalin and was unlikely to have been a pressure measure abruptly designed to target Japan.
Attention is also turning to how the episode will affect already strained relations between the two countries. Lian said that now that China has made a move on the Russia-Japan territorial issue, Japan cannot leave it without a response, and predicted ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen next month that "there may be little room for China-Japan relations to ease even in November."
The timing of Russia's detention of a Japanese journalist on the same day has also drawn notice. Russia's Federal Security Service abruptly detained Yuki Imai, 34, a reporter for Japan's Hokkaido Shimbun, in the Far Eastern Sakhalin region on the 13th on suspicion of espionage. Imai is accused of collecting Russian military intelligence with the intent of passing it to Japanese intelligence agencies. Analysts say Russia and China, each locked in disputes with Japan — over sovereignty of the Kuril Islands and over Taiwan, respectively — have moved to coordinate pressure on Tokyo.