Japanese jets intercept Chinese plane

On 7 January, Japanese fighter jets were scrambled to intercept a Chinese government plane flying towards the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The Y-12 propeller plane flew unannounced into Japan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) approximately one hundred miles from the Islands, which China refers to as the Diaoyu Islands. This incident is the latest in a series of confrontations between China and Japan, both of whom seeking ownership of the uninhabited Islands in a bid to claim hegemony over the strategic, hydrocarbon-rich East China Sea.

Tuesday’s events follow what the Japanese view as China’s belligerent announcement of its new ADIZ back in November 2013, which led to the US, Japan’s main ally, flying two B52 bombers through the newly announced air space in protest at the move.  The navies and air forces of the two Asian giants have also repeatedly confronted each other in the locale of the Islands since Japan nationalised them in 2012, with both premiers taking a tougher stand over foreign policy. International observers worry that, if these confrontations continue to increase in frequency and intensity, they could escalate to military engagements drawing in other world powers.

In an unusual diplomatic exchange between officials of the two countries, the Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, wrote "If militarism is like the haunting Voldermort of Japan, the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul." In response to the comments referencing Harry Potter’s arch nemesis, the Japanese Ambassador, Keiichi Hayashi, warned that his counterpart’s country risked becoming the “Lord Voldemort of East Asia”.

It is believed the eight uninhabited islands are located near potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves and strategic shipping lanes, as well as being situated in valuable fishing waters. The island's Exclusive Economic Zone would grant the controlling state sovereignty over these resources.

For further analysis on the claims by each side to these islands, please visit our border briefing page on the East China Sea.

China at odds with Japan, US over new air zone

This week has seen a marked challenge to the US' decades-long hegemony over the Asia-Pacific region. On Saturday 23 November, China announced the creation of a new “air defence identification zone” in the East China Sea, which controversially overlaps with an air zone set out by Japan and covers the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Both Japan and the US are heavily opposed to the air zone and see it is a destabilising move in an already fraught maritime area dividing these two Asian neighbours.

Unannounced, the US flew two B52 bombers over the disputed Islands in defiance at the new Chinese air rules on Tuesday 26 November. The aircraft took off from the island of Guam, a US military outpost in the Pacific, as part of a routine defence exercise, without filing the flight plans with Chinese authorities, sending a clear signal that Washington is not prepared to accept any unilateral change to the status quo. China said that the entire flight was closely monitored and that aircraft that pass through the zone must obey its rules and declare their plans.

Beijing has told Tokyo that the flight information for all Japanese-chartered flights travelling through this air space must be filed with them in advance. Having firstly met the request, Japan's premier Shinzo Abe said shortly after the US bomber flight that Japan would not be doing so in future, saying instead that the zone was “invalid”.

Military muscles were flexed by both powers this week as tensions continue to mount. The day after the B52s flew across the East China Sea, the Japanese parliament passed a bill which enshrined a national security council, effectively handing over more control of the state military apparatus to Abe. On Wednesday 27 December, China's President Xi Jinping launched the country's Liaoning aircraft carrier into the South China Sea – another area where they are engaged in several maritime border disputes.

Relations between the second and third-largest economies in the world have been strained during the last year, as Japan has remained defiant of its territorial rights over islands in the East China Sea in the face of an increasingly robust foreign policy by China. Ships and aircraft from both sides have been involved in provocative military exercises in each other's back yards since Japan officially bought three of the islands from a private owner in September 2012.

It is believed the eight uninhabited islands, referred to as the Senkaku and Diaoyu Islands by Japan and China respectively, are located near potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves and strategic shipping lanes, as well as being situated in valuable fishing waters. The island's Exclusive Economic Zone would grant the controlling state sovereignty over these resources.

For further analysis on the claims by each side to these islands, please visit our border briefing page on the East China Sea.

Offshore exploration tender issued by CNOOC

China's leading offshore oil producer, the state-run CNOOC, has issued a tender on the company website yesterday inviting IOCs to bid to participate in the exploration of 25 oil and gas blocks, the majority of which are located in the South and East China Sea. The blocks cover a total area of 102,577km², include 10 highly attractive deep-water patches and represent the largest offshore tender offered (in terms of real size) by China since the 1990s.

The announcement is the latest in a series of moves by China to assert its claims in the strategically-located South and East China Sea by launching tenders for oil and gas blocks, as well as frequent diplomatic manoeuvres and shows of military strength. Tellingly, the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not formally meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last week, following an escalation of tensions between the two Asian giants over the sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Last week, Abe made a defiant statement claiming that Japan would not make any concessions on its territorial integrity.

Two of the newly announced blocks, 33/02 and 41/14 in the Lishui Sag area, are located in close proximity to the disputed Islands, whose purchase by Japan last year reignited the centuries-old question over ownership. The state-run company is also thought to be investing $5 billion in developing submerged gas fields in the East China Sea, with the possibility of tapping gas deposits in Japanese waters through diagonal and horizontal drilling methods. The company has already come under scrutiny this month from Green Dragon Gas, which claims that CNOOC breached production sharing contracts by drilling wells on its licences without notification.

In June, China angered Vietnam by inviting IOCs to jointly participate in the development of nine blocks in the waters around Hainan, blocks which Hanoi considers overlap into their maritime territory. CNOOC's usual operating procedure is to team up with foreign firms during the exploration phase, but holds the right to take a 51% in the block once a commercial find is made. PetroVietnam was involved in a dispute with its northern neighbour last December when Beijing accused it of 'unilateral oil and gas exploration activities'.

For more background on the China-Japan Islands dispute, please refer to our previous news story dated 30 September 2013.

Tensions escalate between China and Japan

China's President Xi Jinping said Monday that he will not meet Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit this week, following comments made by Abe at a news conference in New York over a disputed islet. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Abe said that “Japan will not make a concession on our territorial integrity,” but stressed that he did not wish to escalate the issue any further, despite what he called “intrusions by Chinese government vessels in our territorial waters.”

Relations between the second and third-largest economies in the world have been strained during the last year, as Japan has remained defiant of its territorial rights over islands in the East China Sea in the face of an increasingly robust foreign policy by China. Ships and aircraft from both sides have been involved in provocative military exercises in each other's back yards for over a year, since Japan officially bought three of the islands from a private owner in September 2012.

It is believed the eight uninhabited islands, referred to as the Senkaku and Diaoyu Islands by Japan and China respectively, are located near potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves, strategic shipping lanes and in valuable fishing waters. The island's exclusive economic zone would grant the controlling state sovereignty over these resources. Unsurprisingly, Chinese protests over the sovereignty of the islands only began in the mid-1970s, after the oil and gas discoveries were first made.

China's claims to the islands date back many centuries, historically serving as important fishing waters for the Chinese province of Taiwan. In the 19th century, they were ceded, along with Taiwan, to Japan in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. They were formally incorporated into Japanese territory, as part of the Ryukyu Islands (modern day Okinawa), that same year and retained that status until after the Second World War.

In 1951, Japan's claim to Taiwan was renounced in the Treaty of San Francisco, and the islands subsequently fell under US trusteeship until they were returned to Japan twenty years later. Despite the question of sovereignty over the islands being raised in both 1951 and 1971, China at no point contested the outcomes of those formal agreements. Beijing has retrospectively argued that they should have been returned, but the Kuomintag leader, Chiang Kai-shek, did not make these feelings heard at the time. Worth noting is that the islands are also claimed by Taiwan.