Free China's Territorial Disputes by Chien-Peng Chung

Japan from the day they were discovered and claimed by a Japanese for Japan. 5
    As these rocks were never recorded as having supported or being capable of supporting, “permanent human inhabitation,” although they had at times served as a storm shelter for fishermen and a haunt for herb gatherers, the continuous occupation argument was rarely forwarded by any one of the contending parties. Since 1970, when a “sovereignty” claim was first raised by Taiwan following the discovery of petroleum deposits in the sea-bed around the rocks by a United Nations survey ship, the already convoluted arguments in support of the claims have taken on the “law of the sea” language of continental shelves and exclusive economic zones.
    In 1958, the Continental Shelf Convention (CSC) was completed under the auspices of the United Nation Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 6 Though not a signatory to the convention, the Beijing government of mainland China immediately announced its claim to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the economic resources in and under the entire East China Sea. It asserted its claim on the basis of its sea-bed being a continental shelf or “natural prolongation of the Chinese continent” in accordance with the CSC. This East China Sea Continental Shelf thus extends from the Chinese coast as measured at low tide all the way for some 350-400 miles to the Okinawa Trough just east of the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai rocks, where it plunges into the Pacific Ocean (see Figure 3.1). When the Taipei authorities on Taiwan first made the claim to sovereignty over the rocks as the legitimate government of all China, it also relied on the authority of the CSC to make its claim for exclusive economic rights over the East China Sea and seabed. The sovereignty question soon overshadowed economic arguments once again when the United States as the administrative power of both the Okinawa islands and the disputed rocks handed them to Japanese administration in 1972, but avoided the issue of where the sovereignty of these rocks lay.

    Figure 3.1 The East China Sea
    To the Chinese, the claim of Japan to what it calls the Senkaku rocks is not in the least incidental - a successful Senkaku claim would strengthen , though not establish, Japan’s claim of a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) halfway across the East China Sea from baselines on the shores of the Okinawa Islands as permitted under the UNCLOS III, which finalized the EEZ concept in 1982. The rocks themselves would most likely not qualify for an EEZ because they never showed signs of supporting “permanent human inhabitation.” 7 To strengthen its claim over the rocks, which are just short of 100 miles north-northeast of the northern tip of the island of Taiwan, Taipei had already claimed a 200-mile EEZ over Taiwan and mainland Chinese coasts as early as 1979. China did the same with its 1992 Maritime Law, which created an uproar with the Japanese, and led Japan to respond by claiming its own 200-mile EEZ around the Japanese Isles in early 1996, implemented on 20 July 1996, which specifically included the Senkaku rocks. Could it be coincidental that the right-wing nationalist Nihon Seinensha (Japanese Youth Federation) erected a lighthouse on one of the smaller rocks just six days prior to the Diet passing the enabling legislation? The Chinese did not think so. However, sovereignty dispute notwithstanding, a series of occasional talks was held between officials and scientists from China and Japan from 1978 to 1982, to explore the possibility of jointly developing the hydrocarbon resources under the East China Sea shelf. The building of a lighthouse on the biggest of the eight Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku rocks by the Japanese, and the fear of jeopardizing future sovereignty claims through the “unfortunate” siting of oil-rigs, halted all future talks. Still, the call for joint development came forth time and again from Japan, China, and even Taiwan, which has expressed