Japan builds an island ‘wall’ to counter China’s intensifying military, territorial incursions

MIYAKO, Japan — A high-stakes “game of chicken” is playing out in the East China Sea, as Beijing pokes and provokes Tokyo with an intensifying campaign of aerial and maritime encroachments designed to challenge Japan’s control of disputed islands.

Every day, around the clock, Japan scrambles fighter jets and dispatches coast guard vessels to counter some new Chinese provocation and ward off the intruding boats and planes. It is also building a “wall” of defensive installations, including missile bases, along the chain of subtropical, touristed islands that make up the archipelago’s southwestern arc.