Anyhoo, as I said, I can't see these exercises as being provocative, given the point of them was to defend Japanese-held territory - rather than take control of land under Chinese control.
So control/possession is 90% of the law?
The International Herald Tribune
2 rocks in hard place for Japan and China
By Norimitsu Onishi The New York Times
MONDAY, JULY 11, 2005
TOKYO The smaller of the two islets is roughly the size of a twin bed and pokes 7.4 centimeters out of the ocean. The larger, as big as a small bedroom, rises about twice as high.
The Japanese government has already spent $600 million to keep the two barren islets in the western Pacific above water. Collectively called Okinotori and situated 1,740 kilometers, or about 1,080 miles, south of Tokyo,
the islets have long allowed Japan to assert exclusive economic control over an ocean area larger than all of the country.
But a threat, potentially bigger than damage that could be caused by typhoons or global warming, emerged last year when China challenged Japan's exclusive rights to the waters, describing Okinotori as just a rock. The waters in the area are considered important economically and militarily.
Okinotori lies in a coral reef of 7.8 square kilometers, or 3 square miles, most of which is submerged even at low tide. A few decades ago, the area was dotted with half a dozen islets, but by 1989, only two were visible. To protect its claim, the government in Tokyo encased the tiny protrusions - some 1,280 meters, or 1,400 yards, apart - in concrete that is 25 meters, or 82 feet, thick, at a cost of $280 million.
Workers then covered the smaller islet with a $50 million titanium net to shield it from debris thrown up by the waves. Finally, slits were made across the concrete, so it would comply with the United Nations law that an island be surrounded by water.
As with some of Japan's other territorial disputes, a patriotic organization with rightist roots has taken the lead in rebutting the Chinese challenge to Okinotori's status. The organization, the Nippon Foundation, has drawn plans to build a lighthouse and later to increase the size of the islets by breeding microorganisms known as foraminifera.
The government last month installed radar, repaired a heliport and placed an official address plaque, "1 Okinotori Island, Ogasawara Village, Tokyo."
Shintaro Ishihara, the tough-talking governor of Tokyo, under whose jurisdiction the islets fall, took reporters to Okinotori recently and raised the Japanese flag on it. "That's an island," he said later. "A tiny island. Territory."
"Got a problem with that?" he said with a grin.
The Chinese do. In a meeting with Japanese officials last year, they said Okinotori could not be regarded as an island under the UN Law of the Sea.
According to the law, an "island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide." Furthermore, it adds, "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone."
Okinotori lies at a militarily strategic point, midway between Taiwan and Guam, where American forces are based. Chinese vessels, whose increasing forays into this disputed exclusive economic zone have been drawing Japanese protests, were believed to be mapping the sea bottom over which American warships might pass on their way to Taiwan.
Washington supports Tokyo on the issue of whether Okinotori represents an island or a rock.
No one has ever lived on Okinotori, and the islets do not have any sign of economic life. Workers visit twice a year to repair the casing atop Okinotori, and this year, after China declared the area a rock, the Ministry of Land increased the budget for it to $5.6 million from $2 million.
Last fall, fearing that inaction would mean losing out to China, the Nippon Foundation focused its considerable resources on the issue.
"If someone doesn't do it, this country would drag its feet and nothing would be decided," said Yoshihiko Yamada, who oversees the Okinotori project for the foundation. It wants to build a $1 million lighthouse, which would constitute economic activity by guiding ships.
In another territorial dispute with China, over the Senkaku Islands, Japan's largest rightist group, Nihon Seinen-sha, built a lighthouse there 27 years ago and traveled to it regularly for repairs.
After the government and Nihon Seinen-sha engaged in negotiations last year, the government finally took over control of the lighthouse early this year.
IHT Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune |
