Ships belonging to the Chinese Coast Guard have entered the waters around inlets in the South China Sea that China calls Diaoyu, but Japan calls Senkaku, the day before Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Tokyo. The meeting is the first of its kind in over a decade, and is aimed at improving relations between the two countries. China Marine Police spokesperson Gan Yu said that the ships were on a “normal rights protection patrol” but that it was also a “countermeasure to the Japanese side’s intrusion of one yacht and several patrol vessels into our territorial waters.”
