Next step. Hawaii
A few weeks ago Asia Sentinel
pointed out that China’s newfound focus on its longstanding claim to the
disputed Senkaku/Dioayu rocks were the thin end of a wedge aimed at a much
bigger if dormant claim – to Japan’s Ryukyu islands, which include Okinawa and
stretch 1,000 kilometers along the divide between the east China sea and the
Pacific Ocean.
Now the Hong Kong-based South
China Morning Post has, perhaps unwittingly, become identified with this claim.
It devotes a whole page of its Dec. 4 edition to explaining to its readers why
China regards the barren, uninhabited rocks as of such major importance to
China.
It is no coincidence that a
primary source for the story is Major General Luo Yuan, a PLA strategist who
says that China’s “security and development” are at stake. For sure it helps
drum up nationalist support by claiming that that economic potential is vastly
greater than is actually the case.
The story accompanies this
attempt with a map which appears to show China’s claims extending over the Ryukyu
Islands up to the trench which divides them from the deep Pacific. Yet nowhere
in the article is there any mention of the Ryukyus, their place on the map
being taken up by blobs representing supposed oil and gas fields.
The whole tenor of the article,
by the SCMP’s Beijing correspondent Cary Huang, is that the Senkakus are the
key to ownership of a vast area that is immensely rich not just in oil and gas
and fish but cobalt and manganese nodules. According to the report, “The oil
and natural gas reserves of the East China Sea will be enough to meet China’s
needs for at least 80 years.” There was also “enough manganese in the waters
near the Diaoyus to meet Japan’s needs for 320 years, enough cobalt for 1,300
years, enough nickel for 100 years and enough natural gas for 100 years not to
mention other mineral resources and plentiful fish.”
The reporter did not stop to ask
why if the East China sea is so rich why neither China nor Japan have done
almost nothing to exploit the mineral resources which supposedly lie in the
those parts of the sea (by far the majority) which are not in dispute. It is
not as though the sea is especially deep or otherwise difficult to explore.
Nowhere west of the Okinawa depression is it more than 200 feet deep. As for
fish, the reporter is apparently unaware of just how depleted fish stocks are
already and cry out for conservation measures.
The importance attached to
manganese and nickel nodules is also a bit of nonsense. Sure these exist in
this as in various other sea beds. But the cost of extraction is huge compared
with land based sources. These are not rare elements on the earth’s surface and
China is already the world’s largest producer of manganese. So why make
exaggerated for the Senkaku/Diaoyu?
The geographical importance of
the Senkaku/Diaoyus is also vastly exaggerated by the article. The fact that
the rocks are currently under Japanese control does not in itself validate the
whole Japanese seabed claim which rests on a different definition of the
continental shelf than that advanced by China. The Senkaku/Diaoyu lie on the
continental shelf by any definition but that does not imply the validity of
Japan’s seabed claim. These rocks have long been uninhabited so they have scant
claim to their own 200-miles EEZ.
If the various claims were put to
the International Court in The Hague (where Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
have allowed such conflicts to be settled) it is quite possible that Japan’s
claim to the Senkakus would be supported on historical grounds while China’s
definition of the continental shelf would be recognized over that of Japan.
But China resists any form of
international arbitration on its sea disputes, either with Japan or with the
littoral states of the South China sea despite its strong case in respect of
the East China sea continental shelf. Indeed, by keeping these issues alive it
can leave the issue of the Ryukyus quietly on the table. These islands were
once an independent tributary of both China and Japan. So vaguely drawn maps
such as that in the South China Morning Post and imaginative stories of seabed
riches enable China to use the Senkaku/Diaoyu rocks to broaden the
international issue and incite nationalist fervor.
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