As far as China is concerned, they are mere chunks of uninhabitable rock. However, for Japan , these tiny specks in the Pacific, collectively known as “distant bird island,” serve as a key economic and strategic outpost at a time of growing concern over Chinese military activity in the region.
This week, Japan said it would spend ¥13 billion (US$110.4 million) to rebuild an observation post on the island of Okinotorishima, about 1,690km south of Tokyo, in a move that could reignite a long-running maritime dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.
In recent years, Okinotorishima has been largely overlooked, while the northeast Asian rivals clashed diplomatically over sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands — also known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), which Taiwan also claims — in the East China Sea.
While China has never laid claim to Okinotorishima, Japan’s decision to devote such large sums to the atoll’s upkeep will not be welcomed in Beijing.
Located roughly midway between Taiwan and Guam, the atoll — which measures just 4.5km east to west and 1.7km north to south — is also of rising strategic importance amid tensions over China’s claims to the Senkakus and its island-building project in the South China Sea.
Chinese vessels are thought to have mapped the surrounding seabed in anticipation of submarine operations against incoming US ships in the event of a conflict, most likely over Taiwan.
Beijing has long insisted that Okinotorishima comprises rocks — not islands — that are unable to sustain human life and should not, therefore, be used by Japan to expand its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines an island as “a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.” The convention states that “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.”
That is why Japan has not followed China’s example in the South China Sea and created manmade islands with thousands of tonnes of sand and concrete; instead, it has tried to prevent existing coral beds from disappearing beneath the ocean, taking its EEZ with them.
Since the late 1980s, it has spent about US$600 million building steel breakwaters and concrete casings to prevent erosion of two islets that protrude from the water at low tide; a third visible islet is covered by a titanium net to protect it from debris created by the waves. It also constructed a three-story observatory that monitors ships in the area and sends data to Japan’s land ministry.
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