Japan-China Oil Dispute Escalates

Relations Already Uneasy as Tokyo Accuses Beijing of Tapping Disputed Fields

TOKYO, Oct. 21 — China has completed at least one new drilling platform in the East China Sea and may already be tapping into hotly contested natural gas and oil fields, escalating a dispute with Japan over the rights to billions of dollars worth of underwater energy reserves, according to Japanese reconnaissance data.

The Chinese action, Japanese officials charge, has aggravated a potential flash point in East Asia even as diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing languish. The increasingly uneasy relationship between East Asia’s two dominant countries also includes territorial disputes and a heated row over Japan’s perceived lack of repentance for World War II-era aggression.
China is rapidly growing into an economic superpower and is hungry for sources of energy and raw materials. Economic ties have grown tremendously between the two nations in recent years, but they remain in fierce regional competition. Both, for instance, are courting Russia in the hopes of securing an advantageous route for a new trans-Siberian pipeline to the Pacific, and they are locked in a battle for diplomatic and economic influence over a host of Southeast Asian nations.

But Japan has grown so alarmed by China’s activities in the East China Sea that it dispatched two envoys to Washington this month to brief Bush administration and State Department officials on what authorities here described as a “major threat to Japanese sovereignty.”

Washington Post