Photo/Illutration Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Suzutsuki (Taken from the MSDF website)

New details have come to light on the intrusion of a Japanese destroyer into Chinese territorial waters last July that demonstrate the multitude of errors that precipitated it and Beijing’s strict response.  

Sources said a Chinese naval vessel fired signal flares into the air and issued a stern warning to the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Suzutsuki to immediately leave the area.

The Chinese government had previously disclosed the incursion, but specifics had remained unclear.

According to sources in the Defense Ministry and the SDF, a Chinese naval vessel spotted the Suzutsuki approaching Chinese territorial waters off the coast of Zhejiang province on July 4, 2024.

After the destroyer entered the territorial waters, the Chinese side fired signal flares into the air using a handgun and demanded via radio that the vessel change its course.

However, the vessel’s electronic navigation chart did not display the boundaries of Chinese territorial waters, and the Suzutsuki continued to sail within the area for some time, the sources said.

“It was a dangerous situation where an accidental clash could have occurred,” a senior Defense Ministry official said.

The Defense Ministry and the SDF have not disclosed the facts of the incident for more than a year, with one source describing it as a matter concerning SDF operations.

A government investigation found that the captain and crew of the Suzutsuki had failed to configure the electronic navigation chart to display the boundaries between international and territorial waters.

The captain at the time of the incident explained that the vessel did not realize it had entered Chinese territorial waters, indicating that the incursion was not intentional.

The Defense Ministry determined that the captain had committed a serious error and effectively dismissed the individual in a subsequent personnel reshuffle. Only the personnel change was made public, with no reason provided.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government lodged a protest with Japan immediately after the incursion.

The Japanese government unofficially conveyed that it was a mistake caused by the captain’s failure to ascertain the vessel’s precise location and expressed its “regret” over the incident, the sources said.

Electronic navigation charts on MSDF destroyers can be configured to display boundaries for international waters, territorial waters and exclusive economic zones, among other areas.

Since the information on display can be customized, an MSDF source said, “It is standard practice to display territorial boundaries in sensitive maritime areas. It is unbelievable that they did not enable that setting.”

Additionally, the MSDF’s Maritime Operations Center in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, which monitors the movements of major vessels around the clock, failed to prevent the Suzutsuki’s incursion.

“There was a fixed assumption that a destroyer would never commit a territorial incursion, and that led to the oversight,” an MSDF source said. “It was a cascade of human errors on the part of the destroyer and the command center. This is a situation that should never have occurred.”

Moreover, the hotline between Japanese and Chinese defense authorities, established in 2023, was not utilized, suggesting that multiple layers of safety mechanisms failed to function.

In August of the same year, a Chinese military aircraft entered Japanese airspace for the first time off the Danjo Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture.

China explained to the Japanese government that it had no intention of violating Japanese airspace and that the aircraft had briefly entered it due to “force majeure” caused by air currents.

While some within the SDF suspected the incursion may have been deliberate, a senior Defense Ministry official said, “Japan’s territorial waters incursion in July made it difficult to strongly protest to China.”

(This article was written by Mizuki Sato and Daisuke Yajima.)

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