China and Japan Island Dispute Simmers

Simona Botviciute,

Editor (Asia – Far East)

 

HONG KONG – Relationship between the world’s second- and third-largest economies have been strained due to the bitter wartime past. Today the fragile ties between Japan and China came under another strain after ships from both parties sailed into the waters of the disputed islands in the East China Sea as approximately 170 Japanese lawmakers visited a controversial war memorial.

The uninhabited islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, are controlled by Tokyo. After the war the islands were administrated by the US occupation force who returned them to Japan in 1972. According to the Japanese Coast Guard, eight Chinese government ships had entered the waters surrounding the disputed islands on last Tuesday. It is the largest number of ships allowed to do so ever since the tensions over this dispute escalated last year.

China claims that its ships were placed in order to monitor the movements of Japanese vessels in the area. Summoned by Japanese foreign ministry, Cheng Yonghua – the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo – has stated that Japanese ships intruded China’s territory. Nonetheless, China’s sovereignty declarations include entire South China Sea and islands within its territory, based on alleged historical instances.

Japan has once again expressed concerns about China’s maritime activity and is seeking for an increase in the surveillance capability near the disputed islands. There was a talk about creating a marine force specifically to defend and monitor it. Moreover, last Tuesday Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated that any attempt to land on the islands would be repelled by force.

Recently new leaders have taken office in both countries: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both yet need to develop communication patterns in order to avoid any further escalations and a possible war, which would bring the US into the picture due to their mutual security treaty with Japan. Meanwhile, observers anticipate G20 summit that both leaders will attend, therefore this could be the chance to fix a very bad situation.

Image Courtesy: Jackopoid (Wiki Commons) Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license