Japanese Management of Chinese Gray Zone Tactics around the Senkaku Islands (2021-2025): Alliance Commitments, Maritime Surveillance, and Proactive Restraint

Details

Supervisors

de Wilde d'Estmael, Tanguy

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences politiques, orientation relations internationales, à finalité spécialisée: diplomatie et résolution des conflits

Abstract

Between 2021 and 2025, Chinese government vessels set a new annual record of presence around the Senkaku Islands for four years running, while Japan undertook its largest maritime capability expansion of the post-Cold War period. Neither accumulation was converted into a change of register. This thesis asks how the articulation between Japanese maritime surveillance capabilities and allied and minilateral commitments transformed the management of Chinese gray zone pressure at the islands. Through a qualitative single case study of the primary record, it holds the gray zone as a state of affairs, alliances and minilateral formats as a type of interaction, and surveillance as a means in one frame, and finds that each instrument performs a function other than the one its name announces. The stabilisation of escalation deterrence and the continued erosion of the practical exclusivity of Japanese administration appear as two effects of one property, the height of a threshold both parties observe.