As jingoists in China and Japan work overtime to ratchet up the two countries’ dispute over the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, their governments should make haste to deploy the statecraft needed to defuse tensions.
The uninhabited rocks of the Senkaku are administered and controlled by Japan, whose government leases the islands from a private owner. For now, the resource bounty of the archipelago is limited to fish. But sovereign possessions of the slightest current value are made more attractive by creating claims to exclusive economic zones under the law of the sea. With China’s rise have come more forceful claims from Beijing over a long string of maritime footholds in surrounding waters, rattling nerves in neighbouring countries.
For the Senkaku, a status quo that had worked well is now being disturbed by rabble-rousers on all sides. Chinese fishermen are challenging Japanese control; last year the coastguard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing vessel. In Japan, Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo’s belligerent governor, has been raising private funds to purchase the islands for commercial development under the Tokyo regional government. The damage that this freelance flag-planting could do to relations with China prompted an unheard of public rebuke from Japan’s ambassador in Beijing.