Japan’s Ministry of Defense said on July 21 that a Chinese naval vessel had conducted a machine-gun firing exercise two days earlier inside Japan’s claimed EEZ in the Pacific. It was first time the ministry has publicly announced a case involving a foreign warship conducting a live-fire exercise inside Japan’s EEZ.
According to the Joint Staff, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force detected three Chinese vessels – the Type 055 (Renhai-class) destroyer Anshan, the Type 052D (Luyang III-class) destroyer Kaifeng, and the Type 903A replenishment ship Kekexilihu – and the Russian Navy’s Steregushchiy-class frigate Rezkiy sailing northeast about 330 kilometers southwest of Okinotorishima, Japan’s southernmost territory. The Joint Staff later confirmed that the Kaifeng conducted the machine-gun firing roughly 180 kilometers southwest of the island, squarely inside Japan’s EEZ.
The same four ships had passed southward between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island on July 16.
An overview map of Chinese and Russian naval vessel movements. The red arrow indicates the movements of Chinese and Russian naval vessels, while the red dot marks the location where a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a machine-gun firing exercise on July 19. Map via Japan’s Joint Staff Office, Ministry of Defense.
The Chinese destroyer radioed nearby vessels shortly before the drill to announce its location and duration, a transmission the MSDF destroyer Samidare, on monitoring duty, picked up. Tokyo lodged a diplomatic protest, arguing the exercise could endanger nearby shipping.
The key point is that Japan did not allege a violation of international law. The firing occurred well beyond Japan’s 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, in waters Tokyo regards as part of its EEZ, and no damage to vessels was reported. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an EEZ grants coastal states sovereign rights over natural resources, not full sovereignty over all activity within it. Foreign militaries generally retain freedom of navigation there, and military exercises in another state’s EEZ are not automatically unlawful – a principle the United States and other maritime powers rely on, even as China has long pressed for greater coastal state control over foreign military activity in waters it claims as its own.
That makes Beijing’s response here somewhat ironic. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian dismissed Japan’s protest as groundless and accused Tokyo of exaggerating external threats to justify its own military buildup. He also revived China’s long-standing argument that Okinotorishima is a rock, not an island capable of generating an EEZ under UNCLOS Article 121. Japan has reinforced Okinotorishima with concrete to preserve its claim to islet status.
The legal disagreement therefore runs deeper than the question of whether military exercises are permissible in another state’s EEZ. Beijing rejects Japan’s entitlement to an EEZ around Okinotorishima altogether, arguing that the surrounding waters are part of the high seas and that China’s activities there are fully consistent with international law and customary international practice. At the same time, China is invoking a permissive interpretation of naval freedom that it typically resists when the United States and its allies conduct military operations in the South China Sea.
For Japan, the immediate concern is safety: a live-fire drill, even with prior notice, creates risks for commercial and fishing vessels when warning windows are brief. The larger concern is strategic signaling.
The Kaifeng was operating alongside the Russian frigate during a joint maritime patrol following the two navies’ “Joint Sea 2026” exercise near Qingdao, underscoring how bilateral drills are increasingly extending into coordinated operations across the Western Pacific.
This photo, released by Japan’s Ministry of Defense, shows the Chinese destroyer Kaifeng (left) and the Russian frigate Rezkiy engaged in a gunnery exercise, July 19, 2026. Photo via Japan’s Joint Staff Office, Ministry of Defense.
Chinese military activity and China-Russia operations around Japan have grown more frequent and sophisticated in recent years, including joint bomber flights, China’s submarine-launched ballistic missile test on July 6, and repeated transits through the Miyako and Tsushima straits.
China-Russia military cooperation used to be largely symbolic demonstrations of political solidarity between Beijing and Moscow. Today, their activities are approaching genuine operational interoperability, with the two navies coordinating command, tempo, and geography across an ever wider stretch of the Western Pacific.
That context is why Tokyo treated the drill as more than an isolated gunnery exercise. Defense Minister Koizumi Shinjiro, speaking in Britain, framed it as one element of deepening China-Russia military cooperation. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara Minoru said Japan would keep monitoring China-Russia activity around the archipelago “with concern.”
Japanese officials increasingly view such episodes not as isolated events but as evidence that a bilateral exercise near China’s coast can extend seamlessly into operational training deep in the Western Pacific.
On July 17 Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Jiang Bin defended the broader China-Russia military partnership as resting on principles of non-alliance, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of third parties. He described the exercise and subsequent patrol as part of an annual cooperation plan rather than a response to current international or regional tensions.
The incident also exposes a dilemma for Tokyo. Japan wants to defend its maritime claims and deter risky behavior, but must avoid legal arguments broad enough to undercut the freedom of navigation principles that Japan and its allies rely on elsewhere, including in the South China Sea.
The more durable Japanese argument, then, is not that China’s drill was unlawful, but that it was unsafe and deliberately timed for effect. That distinction keeps Tokyo aligned with the maritime order it seeks to defend, while still spotlighting how Beijing and Moscow are using ostensibly routine naval operations to normalize pressure around Japan.
Beijing portrays the patrol as a routine activity conducted under the two militaries’ annual cooperation plan. Tokyo sees something different: another indication that China-Russia naval cooperation is steadily expanding beyond symbolic diplomacy into coordinated operations that increasingly challenge the strategic position of the United States and its allies in the Western Pacific.
Okinotorishima is tiny, but the waters around it have become a testing ground for competing interpretations – not only of maritime law, but also of the evolving strategic balance in the Western Pacific.
