China in deep in protecting its waters
Beijing is increasingly determined to defend its sea rights in disputes with neighbours

Minnie Chan and Agencies

China's emergence as a sea power and its increasing reliance on oceanic resources means Beijing will stand firm in territorial water disputes to protect its interests, experts say.

Over the past two decades, Beijing had settled territorial land disputes with all its neighbours except India, sometimes making concessions considered too great by radical nationalists, Shanghai-based security expert Ni Lexiong said.

But it has made no compromises of any kind when it comes to territorial water disputes, because it has turned from an agricultural country into a maritime power.

"More and more people are starting to realise how rich the underwater resources are. There's no way our government will make concessions," Ni said. "China's growing reliance on the ocean for energy, commerce and food means that Beijing will dig in its heels."

Beijing is determined to defend waters it considers to be its own. It has sent naval vessels and surveillance ships to patrol its exclusive economic zones far more often than in the past. Large parts of these self-defined zones, however, overlap with those defined by its neighbours, setting the stage for confrontations.

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada summoned the Chinese ambassador yesterday to protest about a Chinese naval ship's pursuit of a Japanese survey vessel on Monday in a disputed area of the East China Sea about 320 kilometres northwest of Amami Oshima island, southern Japan, in waters that both sides claim as their exclusive economic zone.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the Chinese ship was acting within its rights. "It's totally legitimate for a Chinese maritime survey vessel to undertake law-enforcement activities in these seas," she said.

The latest spat between the two countries follows a protest last month over a Chinese helicopter that flew too close to a Japanese destroyer.

China has had disputes with other neighbours as well. Vietnam said it planned to protest against a Chinese fishing ban which violates its sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea. The two countries are engaged in a long-running dispute over control of the Spratlys and another archipelago to the north, the Paracels, which China occupies.

Professor Wang Hanling , an expert in maritime affairs and international law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said territorial water disputes between Beijing and its neighbours had become white hot as China emerged as a sea power.

"Actually, such disputes have existed since oil and other oceanic resources were discovered under the Diaoyu Islands and the Spratlys and Paracels in the South and East China seas in the 1970s," Wang said.

"There was a suggestion of persuading all Southeast Asian countries to join together to battle China in territorial water disputes in the 1970s, which once concerned Beijing."

But he said Beijing had dismissed this concern after seeing no action more than 30 years later.

"We found our neighbours had territorial water disputes to wrangle over and national interests to defend, which makes it very difficult for them to build a unified front against China," Wang said. "Even if they succeed in joining together, they are still not strong enough to defeat China."

With the argument that China's sovereign rights to and administration of the islands in the South and East China seas were established in writing 1,000 years ago, Wang said Beijing would stick to this line.

Additional reporting by Reuters, Agence France-Presse