In the fourth round of consultation on the East China Sea issue between China and Japan in early March, China reaffirmed its position of jointly exploring the contentious areas near Diaoyudao Island by putting aside territorial disputes. According to Japanese media reports, Tokyo has basically rejected this proposal.

Nevertheless, two distinct voices were heard in the Japanese Government on how to work toward a future solution to the issue. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso showed a stern face. He told the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Japanese House of Representatives that it was impossible to agree to China's proposal of jointly exploring the resources in the East China Sea. He added that Japan might resort to confrontational measures if China goes ahead with gas exploitation in the area. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Toshihiro Nikai, however, demonstrated a less radical stance. It is his belief that a positive attitude should be adopted to resolve the dispute through consultation.

The divergence of views in Tokyo speaks of the explicit challenges posed by the East China Sea issue to China-Japan relations. The two neighbors have arrived at a crossroad: either to forge broader and deeper cooperative ties by ending their disputes through consultation, or to allow their relations to degenerate to a state of confrontation because of conflicting interests.

In the limelight

The territorial dispute in the East China Sea was thrust into the spotlight in late May 2004, when Japanese political figures and media showed concern about China's Chunxiao gas project. Although the gas field is not in the disputed area, the Japanese Government said it could suck away Japan's share of the natural gas reserves "as with a straw," since the project is only 5 km from what it unilaterally recognizes as the "median line."

The Japanese Government created a special organ responsible for formulating comprehensive measures to protect its marine rights and interests, jumpstarting marine resource investigation programs on the Japanese side of the "median line" and offering guidance to Japanese private companies in natural gas exploitation in the area.

Regarding these moves, the Chinese Government suggested that the two countries should seek to resolve the dispute through dialogue and consultation. Talks began in October 2004. During the first two rounds of consultation, Japan disregarded China's idea of joint development, and demanded that China stop the project and provide technical data to Japan.

In the third round of talks last October, Japan ostensibly accepted the notion of "joint development," but it listed gas fields located in areas over which China has incontestable territorial rights, like Chunxiao, as projects to be jointly developed. Obviously, Japan intends to narrow the disagreement over the demarcation of the East China Sea down to natural resource disputes in Chunxiao gas field region, so as to prompt China to accept or acquiesce to its "median line" theory.

In the fourth round, China reasserted that joint exploration should be conducted in areas under dispute, as only in these areas does the possibility exist of cooperation on the issue of territorial rights between the two governments.

Prominent dispute

China's proposal of "shelving disputes to engage in joint exploration" is based on the historical and practical considerations over the East China Sea territorial dispute, and serves the long-term interests of both China and Japan.

The two countries have been embroiled in disputes over the natural resources in the East China Sea and the territorial sovereignty of Diaoyudao since the 1960s, when rich oil deposits were discovered in that area. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea adopted in 1982, coastal states can claim an exclusive economic zone extending 200 nautical miles from their shores, where they have special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources.

Given these provisions, China and Japan have run into increasingly prominent disputes over the demarcation of the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zones in the East China Sea.

The disputes can mainly be summed up into two aspects. The first one is the criterion of East China Sea demarcation. According to Articles 66 and 67 of the UN convention, China holds that the seabed of the East China Sea is a natural extension of China's continental shelf, which extends to the median line of the Okinawa Trough. It is therefore entitled to the territorial right of exploring the continental shelf and the natural resources there. Japan does not share the continental shelf with China, it says.

Japan, however, first cited the exclusive economic zone concept and then claimed that it shared the continental shelf with China. As far as the current standoff is concerned, what matters is not Japan's justification for its claims, but the fact that it has been found to lack the willingness to be consultative from the very beginning. It drew a "median line" in 1982 and has been attempting to make the line an established fact ever since. It refuses China's proposal precisely because it insists that the areas east of the so-called "median line" are part of Japanese territory.

The second aspect of the disputes is the sovereign status of Diaoyudao. A serious problem with Japan's unilateral "median line" is that it not only marks Diaoyudao as a Japanese territory but also uses the islands as the baseline of territorial sea demarcation. The clash over the sovereignty of the islands is the most relevant historical issue between China and Japan at present. Japan's claim of sovereignty over them began in 1895 and was closely linked with other historical events at the time such as Japan's foreign expansion after the Meiji Reform, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and its seizure of Taiwan and Penghu Liedao Archipelago.

A deeper probe into the Diaoyudao problem could involve the history of the ancient Ryukyu Kingdom, or today's Okinawa. However, Japan's actual control of the islands today derives from the Japan-U.S. San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, which wrongly put the islands under the trusteeship of the United States as part of the Ryukyu Islands. Not a signatory party, China does not recognize the treaty. When it returned the Ryukyu Islands to Japan in May 1972, Washington transferred the administrative rights of Diaoyudao to Tokyo as well because of its Cold War strategic considerations, a move that the Chinese Government strongly condemned.

Given the complexity and sensitivity of the issue, Chinese and Japanese leaders agreed that they would set aside the territorial disputes when they signed the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978. The Chinese leader then pointed out that the next generation would be wise enough to find a solution to the problem.

Today, the Chinese Government has put forward detailed suggestions on joint development based on the vision of previous leaders. In effect, this is the only valid choice for the two countries to achieve win-win results. Regrettably, what we have seen so far is Japan's persistent reluctance to cooperate and frequent vows to take the disputed areas as its own and resort to confrontational measures. These have added to the uncertainty of the East China Sea territorial disputes.