Worrisome trend

The situation in the East China Sea seems to be a touchy one in 2006, mainly because the joint military exercise of Japan and the United States at the beginning of the year was squarely targeted at the Diaoyudao issue. Japan has been going out of its way to create an illusion that China wants to solve the problem by force. As a matter of fact, it is what Japan has done that risks putting the situation in jeopardy.

In the last couple of years, Japan has adopted the following basic policies toward China regarding the East China Sea issue: ignoring China's suggestions on the joint development of contentious areas; demanding that China stop exploring areas that are not under dispute such as Chunxiao gas field; encouraging Japanese companies to explore gas fields in the disputed areas by taking administrative measures and beefing up legislation; establishing a legal framework that allows armed forces to protect the companies' operations; and attempting to prohibit other countries from carrying out gas exploration in disputed areas by law.

Before the second China-Japan consultation last May, Japan began to review applications filed by Japanese companies to launch gas exploitation on a trial basis in the East China Sea. It formally granted the right to Teikoku Oil last July. Apparently, the Japanese Government is taking systematic steps to monopolize the disputed areas.

Putting the East China Sea issue in a wider context, we may conclude that Japan's response to the issue is actually part of a larger campaign to seek an overall expansion of its marine rights. Two characteristics have stood out in this respect. First, Japan has taken an unyielding stance, not only toward China, but also toward South Korea and Russia on territory disputes.

Second, it has turned a blind eye to international law and basic international codes of conduct. A telling example is its attitude toward Okino Torishima, reefs in the Pacific Ocean that rise less than 1 meter above high tide and cover an area of less than 10 square meters. Okino Torishima cannot meet the requirements of a baseline of its territorial sea set in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, nor can it have an exclusive economic zone according to the convention.

However, Japan invested billions of yen on consolidating the two reefs by using sophisticated technology. Embankments have been built around the rocks, turning them into manmade large reefs. At the same time, it used them as the baseline of its territorial sea and demanded a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone around it. It then asked China to keep it informed before carrying out scientific explorations near the reefs.

In order to justify this claim, it cited the provisions in the UN convention only partially. While asserting the first sub-article of Article 121 of the convention that "an island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide," it gives short shrift to the third sub-article, which stipulates that "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf."

Many international observers are confounded by Japan's unfriendliness to its neighbors. Some say that the tough stance it has taken over the East China Sea issue is intended to hold back China's development or to distract people's attention from Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. In fact, the problem is not as simple as that. Koizumi's shrine visits are not individual cases. They reflect the spiritual pursuit of the conservative forces and extreme nationalists in Japanese society.

The pursuit is materialized by seeking a revision to the country's pacifist Constitution to end the ban on possessing a military and to give its armed forces a more assertive international role, which is expected to bring direct material benefits. Japan's hard-line position speaks of this social mentality. It also serves as a tool for some politicians to fish for political capital and a means for the few extremists to manipulate public opinion.

From territorial disputes with neighbors to the attitude toward its aggressive history and the Constitution amendment, we can see that Japan is increasingly diverting from the track of a peaceful nation, as it walks out of the shadow of its defeat in World War II to become a so-called "normal country."