Japan protests new Chinese construction in East China Sea

Japan Times

5 hours ago

China has stepped up construction of drilling rigs and other platforms off its east coast to tap into maritime resources such as natural gas and fish, raising the ire of Japan and South Korea and fanning fresh concerns about Beijing's regional ambitions.
In the latest development, Japan said on Tuesday it lodged a protest with China after observing a new structure in a natural gas field in the East China Sea. Tokyo reported finding another similar Chinese structure in the same area in May.
South Korea, meanwhile, has protested in recent months about three structures that China built for aquaculture in the Yellow Sea, which separates the Korean peninsula from mainland China.
Ambiguous boundaries are part of the problem. Neither Japan or South Korea have agreed maritime borders with China, raising the prospect that Beijing is looking to exert de facto control over a widening swath of the ocean by staking a claim with new structures. Such a move could have parallels with China's building of artificial features in the South China Sea to expand its area of control there.
"Pending maritime boundary delimitation, it is extremely regrettable that China is advancing unilateral development,' Japan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that the government strongly requested China to cease such activities.
Asked about the Japanese protest, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: "China's oil and gas development activities in the East China Sea are located in the undisputed waters under China's jurisdiction' and entirely within the scope of its sovereign rights and jurisdiction. He said Beijing doesn't accept Japan's assertions.
Japan wants the geographical median line in the East China Sea to be recognized as the maritime border, but China claims exclusive economic development rights extending further east, closer to the Japanese island of Okinawa. Between 2013 and 2015 China erected a dozen drilling rigs just west of the median line, before later adding six more.
The two newly discovered structures are also located just west of the median line.
The dispute comes as Japan is also concerned about the increasing frequency of Chinese coast guard patrols around uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing. Earlier this week, the number of consecutive days that Chinese ships have circled the islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyu in China, reached a new record of 216 days.
On Monday, South Korea's parliamentary agriculture and maritime affairs committee passed a resolution strongly condemning China for installing the Yellow Sea structures. It also urged Beijing to immediately withdraw them and take steps to prevent recurrence, while asking its own government to tighten regular marine surveys and devise countermeasures.
China and South Korea held more than a dozen rounds of discussions aimed at demarcating their maritime border between 2015 and 2024, with little progress.
In 2001, South Korea and China agreed a large section of the Yellow Sea would be kept free of permanent construction because the two sides hadn't reached an agreement on a maritime border. The three platforms are within the area that was to be kept clear under that pact.
In April, South Korea's foreign ministry said Chinese officials had informed Seoul that the structures were built purely for fishery purposes and had nothing to do with territorial or maritime delimitation issues. Satellite images suggest the structures include aquaculture cages.
Some regional analysts have raised the possibility that China may be following a similar playbook to its expansionism in the South China Sea, where it claims almost complete control. After creating artificial features there, Beijing later established military outposts.
China rejected an international tribunal ruling in 2016 that its claim to the region was groundless.
"Concerns that the platforms may be dual-use are not unfounded, given China's track record in the South China Sea, where what were originally weather stations later developed into major military outposts,' analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote recently about the platforms in the Yellow Sea.
In 2008, Japan and China agreed on joint development of gas fields in the East China Sea, but talks have stalled since then. Tomohisa Takei, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, said Japan had little option but to hope for a diplomatic breakthrough to resolve the standoff over East China Sea rigs.
"China is not going to stop its development. If they have resources to invest, they'll keep building,' he said.
Japan's complaint comes as it steps up efforts to deter China's military ambitions in the region. In recent years Tokyo has increased its defense spending and sent destroyers through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.