China and Japan opened talks yesterday to resolve competing claims to gas reserves in the East China Sea, with Tokyo urging Beijing to reconsider a Japanese proposal for joint development of the deposits.
The two days of discussions are the sixth round in two years of plodding negotiations over an issue that has aggravated Japanese-Chinese relations already strained by disputes over Japan's wartime past.
Ahead of the talks, Japan's chief negotiator, Foreign Ministry official Kenichiro Sasae, told Japanese reporters that "we expect the Chinese side to show a more positive, more straightforward stance in the talks," according to a Japanese Embassy official who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
China has rejected the Jap-anese proposal to jointly develop the fields, and at their last meeting, in May, neither Sasae nor his Chinese counterpart, Hu Zhengyue (胡正躍), tabled new offers.
Japan's and China's claims in the East China Sea cover a host of disputes, from where to demarcate each country's exclusive economic zone to sovereignty over a small island chain. Claims to the gas deposits assumed prominence last year after Chinese crews began drilling at a field known as Chunxiao.
Though the drill site is not in a contested area, the field straddles the contested demarcation line, and Japan worries that its share of the reserves will be siphoned off by China.
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