VANDERBILT POLITICAL REVIEW
INTERNATIONAL
Treasure Island(s)
Murky international law has fueled tensions in the East China Sea
O
by SUFEI WU ‘15
n Thanksgiving, Chinese warplanes flew over a small group
of uninhabited islands in the East
China Sea -- known as the Diaoyu to the
Chinese and the Senkaku to the Japanese
-- after Japanese and Korean aircrafts flew
over the same area earlier in the week.
They are a cluster of eight uninhabited islands 200 nautical miles east from mainland China and 240 nautical miles southwest from the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Their ownership has been in
dispute since 1971, when the
United States ceased its World
War II occupation of Japan and
the islands. This dispute has been
persistent, but mild, over the past
four decades; recently, however,
the debate has taken on a renewed
intensity due both to China’s meteoric rise as an global economic
superpower and a 2011 United
Nations geological survey of the
East China Sea, which found significant hydrocarbon resources
in the area rivaling those of the Persian
Gulf. International law of the sea grants
exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of 200
nautical miles off the coast of sovereign
nations, providing complete control of
the sea bed and water column, which includes underwater resource -- making posession of these islands wildly lucrative.
Japan’s claim to the islands stretches
back to January 1895, when after extensive surveying, the Japanese government
found the islands to be terra nullius or “no
man’s land” and sought to incorporate it.
Then, beginning in 1945, the United States
took control of the islands during World
War II. Only after the war ended in 1971
did the issue of ownership surface. This
coincided with a 1968 survey conducted
by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East that suggested the continental shelf between Japan and
Taiwan could contain some of the “most
prolific oil reservoirs in the world.” China,
using language from the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea, points
out that its continental shelf extends to the
Okinawa Trough, and if the Senkaku Islands were indeed Japan’s, Japan’s maritime boundary would cross this natural
minishes farther into the ocean. EEZs do
not restrict “innocent passage” of foreign
vessels, navigation, or the laying of undersea cables, but, as previously mentioned,
protect claims to natural resources. Using
complex geometry, UNCLOS defines hierarchical zones by distance from a state’s
baseline at low-tide. Islands—such as Hawaii—are afforded the same EEZs, as long
as the islands are not “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic
life of their own.” Additionally,
UNCLOS includes a clause tha