== Recentism tag == 

 Every single time a new "event" happens, no matter how trivial, someone seems to add it to the article. Now, I understand—I see the stuff on the news just like everyone else in the region, and it always "feels" like something big is happening ("escalating tensions", "diplomatic consequences", etc.), but the truth is, not all of this week by week history is of lasting encyclopedic value. We do not aim to capture the tiny details of an ongoing event, but, rather, to give a summary overview; after all, that's really the whole point behind having an encyclopedia rather than just a collection of news stories. We provide historical perspective. 

 Also, from a readability/formatting perspective, we're not supposed to just do chronologies, especially not on bulleted list format.  

 Now, the problem is, I know that if I were to go in and start deleting stuff, we'd probably start having major fights about what is or is not important. Is there a way we can move forward on fixing this issue? In an ideal article, I don't think we'd have more than a two or three paragraphs per year. We'd summarize things with phrases like "Throughout 2012, there were a number of incidents where Chinese ships entered what Japanese controlled waters.(+refs)" For particularly noteworthy events, like the 2010 boat collision or the 2012 purchase, we'd add some (though not all) of the details.  

 Would anyone be willing to consider such an approach?