China's lines around islands suggest more conflict
In this Sept. 19, 2012 photo, a costumer picks copies of
newly-published maps of disputed islands, called Diaoyu in China and
Senkaku in Japan, at a state-owned book store in Beijing, China. China
hastily published the map to help maintain public outrage over the
Japanese government’s purchase of some of the islands from their private
Japanese owners. Beijing also has engaged in another type of mapmaking
that may end up escalating the conflict. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT
By LOUISE WATT
Associated Press
/
September 29, 2012
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BEIJING (AP) — One of the hottest items in bookstores across China is
a map for a place that is closed to visitors, home only to animals such
as goats and crabs, and the reason China’s relations with Japan are at
their lowest point in years.
China calls them the Diaoyus; Japan, the Senkakus. The new map shows a
satellite image of a kidney-shaped main island with splotches of green,
and a list of 70 affiliated ‘‘islands’’ that are really half-submerged
rocks.
China hastily published the map to help maintain public outrage over
the Japanese government’s purchase of some of the islands from their
private Japanese owners. Beijing also has engaged in another type of
mapmaking that may end up escalating the conflict.
It has drawn new territorial markers, or baselines, around the
islands, and submitted them to the United Nations. That could lead to a
more serious attempt to claim the islands, and broad swaths of valuable
ocean around them.
‘‘The status quo has been broken in the last month by Japan’s
purchase and China’s publishing of the baselines,’’ said Stephanie
Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group. She said friction is
likely to reach its worst level since the 1980s when China and Japan
tacitly agreed to set aside the dispute in pursuit of better overall
relations.
More than lines on paper are at stake. By submitting the baselines to
the U.N., China is spelling out its claim to the waters, the fish in
them and the oil, gas and other minerals beneath them. Up until now,
China has sought to jointly exploit resources with Japan through
negotiation.
Japan says it bought to islands to maintain stability, noting that
the nationalist governor of Tokyo had been pushing a more radical plan
to not only buy the islands but develop them. China, however, was
outraged, and considered Japan’s move a violation of their earlier
agreements.
The dispute has brought nationalism and patriotism to the fore, and
sparked sometimes violent protests in China targeting Japanese
businesses, restaurants and cars. A Chinese man driving a Toyota Corolla
was beaten unconscious by a mob in the tourist city of Xi'an and left
partially paralyzed, according to state media. Chinese and Japanese
coast guard vessels have been facing off in the contested waters.
The dispute is testing perhaps the most important economic
relationship in Asia, between the world’s second- and third-largest
economies.
Japan has claimed the islands since 1895. The U.S. took jurisdiction
after World War II and turned them over to Japan in 1972. China says
they have been part of its territory since ancient times, and that it
opposed and never acknowledged the deal between Japan and the United
States. Taiwan also claims them.
The islands make a strange setting for a potential conflict zone. The
largest is less than 4 square kilometers (1.5 square miles). It is home
to a growing population of goats — the offspring of a pair brought
there by right-wing Japanese activists in 1977 — as well as moles,
crabs, Okinawan ants, albatross and lizards, and plants including
azalea.
The islands themselves are remote, ‘‘intrinsically worthless
features’’ that were largely forgotten for decades, said Clive Schofield
of the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at
the University of Wollongong.
‘‘The reason why there is uncertainty over the ownership, sovereignty
is because they have essentially been ignored over a large period of
time,’’ Schofield said.
A U.N. survey in the 1970s that said oil and gas may lie beneath the
surrounding waters changed that. Then, the Law of the Sea Convention
introduced the idea of 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones, or
EEZs, which give coastal countries sole exploitation rights over all
natural resources contained within.
China’s new baselines are a prelude to defining that exclusive zone.
It has drawn straight lines around the main group of islands and a
separate set around isolated Chiwei Island, some 50 nautical miles to
the east.
It also plans to submit a document outlining the outer limits of its
sea bed — those that stretch beyond 200 nautical miles from land — in
the East China Sea to a U.N. commission. The move is a way for China to
underscore its claim, but has little real impact. The commission, which
comprises geological experts, evaluates the markers on technical grounds
but has no authority to resolve overlapping claims.
‘‘That puts a line in the sand, but it doesn’t have any legal
impact,’’ said Ian Townsend Gault, director of the Centre for Asian
Legal Studies at the University of British Columbia in Canada.Continued...
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China's lines around islands suggest more conflict
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