Islands, Territorial Dispute | featured news

China reserves the right to take strong countermeasures if Japan "creates incidents" in the waters around a group of disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, a Chinese vice foreign minister said on Friday.

Shintaro Ishihara, the firebrand governor of Tokyo whose obsession with a set of disputed islands prompted Japan’s latest spat with China, declared on Thursday that he was quitting local politics to start a national party, a move that could escalate the territorial dispute and shift allegiances in Japan’s soon-to-be-called elections.

Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba has defended the central government’s decision to buy the Senkaku Islands, stating in a BBC interview in London this week that if Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara had made the purchase, as originally intended, things would be much worse by now. While Genba feels it was the best choice for Japan to control the territory disputed with China, he argued that if the hawkish, nationalist Tokyo Governor had gained control personally, he would have followed through on his publicized plans of landing and developing on the islands, actions that would have outraged China to no end.

Six Chinese maritime surveillance ships entered waters around a group of islands at the center of a heated territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing, ignoring warnings from the Japanese authorities.

China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia must move determinedly to draw up a code of conduct to help resolve disputes in the South China Sea, and should refrain from threats and coercion that have sent tension skyrocketing, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

Vast oil reserves, trillion-dollar trade routes, fervent nationalist sentiments, competing territorial claims and bitter histories – the waters off the east coast of China are a sea of money and a sea of trouble.

Japan on Friday sent home the first group of Chinese activists detained after landing on an island claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, a move China welcomed but at the same time warned its neighbor against any further escalation in tension.

China recently established a larger army garrison and expanded the size of an ostensible legislature to govern a speck of land, known as Yongxing Island, more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan. The goal of that move, Mr. Wu said, is to allow Beijing to “exercise sovereignty over all land features inside the South China Sea,” including more than 40 islands “now occupied illegally” by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.