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    January 03, 2012

Japanese Lawmakers Visit Island Also Claimed by China

   Steve Herman | Seoul
   Huang Hsi-lin (C-white shirt), the chairman of an activist organization
   that asserts Chinese sovereignty over a group of uninhabited islets,
   known as Senkaku in Japan and Daioyutai in China, takes questions from
   the media, January 3, 2012.
   Photo: AFP
   Huang Hsi-lin (C-white shirt), the chairman of an activist organization
   that asserts Chinese sovereignty over a group of uninhabited islets,
   known as Senkaku in Japan and Daioyutai in China, takes questions from
   the media, January 3, 2012.

   In a move that could escalate a decades-long territorial dispute
   between China and Japan, several Japanese politicians have been spotted
   landing on a disputed islet in the East China Sea.

   Japanese authorities say four municipal politicians from Okinawa
   arrived Tuesday on the eight hectare Uotsuri island, 170 kilometers
   northeast of Taiwan.

   The members of the Ishigaki municipal assembly are pressing Japan's
   claim to a string of rocky, uninhabited islands which are also claimed
   by Beijing and Taipei.

   They are known as the Senkaku islands in Japanese and Daioyutai in
   Chinese.

   There has been no immediate reaction from the Chinese government, which
   has previously termed such landings a grave infringement on its
   sovereignty, contending its territorial claims go back to the Ming
   Dynasty in the 14th century. Japan has claimed the islands since the
   late 19th century, after it annexed Okinawa.

   University of Connecticut professor Alexis Dudden has extensively
   studied Northeast Asia's island disputes. She says the Senkakus are the
   most delicate of all of Japan's various maritime territorial disputes
   with China, South Korea and Russia because of they lie in the middle of
   "very volatile natural resource claims" and have a strategic position.

   "What's at stake today has everything to do with fish on the one hand,
   everything to do with natural gas and oil deposits on that very same
   hand. And, on the other hand, it has everything to do with the rise of
   China's self-perception as a maritime nation and the actual existence
   of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the mix," said Dudden.

   The United States, while recognizing Japanese administrative control of
   the islands, has avoided stating a position on what it calls the
   islands' "ultimate sovereignty."

   Professor Dudden says China's stance is further complicated by Taiwan's
   rival claim.

   "If anybody's historical claim is going to go forth, Taiwan actually
   has, arguably, a stronger claim to the islands than any of the other
   participants," she said. "At the same time, it's very clear from all
   sorts of fishermen's diaries, testimonies, that everybody has been
   chasing fish around these rocks throughout the 20th century."

   Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited Beijing and
   agreed the two countries would hold a high-level meeting to reduce
   maritime tensions.

   Japan's central government restricts landings on the disputed islands
   on the continental shelf. But conservative Japanese politicians have
   called for a tougher stance towards China after clashes between the
   Japanese coast guard and Chinese fishing boats.

   South Korea also faces a similar situation. It is currently holding a
   Chinese skipper who is charged with fatally stabbing a South Korean
   coast guard officer last month who boarded his trawler in the Yellow
   Sea.

   That was the latest in a series of violent confrontations between South
   Korean authorities and Chinese fishing vessels.

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