The China Coast Guard (CCG) has maintained stable and transparent law enforcement operations in the waters around Diaoyu Dao, a Chinese maritime expert said Friday, responding to recent Japanese media reports that focused on the frequency of Chinese patrols in the area.
The CCG reported earlier on Friday that its forces carried out law-enforcement patrol missions in the waters around the island in the East China Sea for 357 days in 2025. The figure was 355 days in 2024.
Yang Xiao, deputy director of the Institute of Maritime Strategy Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, noted that the number of patrol days demonstrates the continuity and normalization of China's maritime rights protection activities around the island.
"This undoubtedly demonstrates the consistent and stable nature of our routine law enforcement patrols around Diaoyu Dao. It means that for the vast majority of the year, our patrol vessels operate in the adjacent waters of the islands," Yang said.
"The Japanese side's obsession with this issue reveals a hypocritical and fragile mindset. They cannot accept our long-term, lawful presence through routine patrols, which is why they pay disproportionate attention to it and attempt to sensationalize it in the media," Yang said.
"In contrast, we proactively disclose our enforcement results, including the exact number of patrol days, which is itself an important aspect of our regular and normalized patrol operations around Diaoyu Dao, to make them transparent, traceable, and observable," Yang said.
China's Diaoyu Dao patrols are normalized, transparent law enforcement: expert
