Japan protests construction, gas extraction by China in contested waters
Offshore staff
JAPAN AND CHINA — The Japanese government has sent a formal protest to Beijing over the construction of a gas extraction platform on the Chinese side of the common maritime border, an area in which both countries have agreed to jointly exploit this resource, MSN reported.
The protest is based on the detection of flames like those used on gas platforms on one of the structures erected by China in these waters, according to Japanese public television NHK.
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the detection of a new flame in one of the structures built in May that would demonstrate that gas exploitation is underway.
Tokyo and Beijing agreed in 2008 to jointly exploit gas in this area. However, the agreement has not yet been signed, and China already has 18 structures in the region and flames have been confirmed in 13 of them. The negotiations were suspended in 2010 when bilateral tensions grew following a Chinese trawler’s collision with a Japan Coast Guard vessel.
The director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asia-Oceania Office, Funakoshi Takehiro, lodged the formal protest at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo and warned that this is "regrettable" news. He has also asked Beijing to return to the negotiating table to conclude a treaty, the MSN report stated.
“It is extremely regrettable that the Chinese side is proceeding with unilateral development in the sea area, while the boundaries of (Japanese and Chinese) exclusive economic zones … have yet to be fixed,” the ministry said.
So far, Tokyo has found 18 structures set up by China on the Chinese side of the median line in the sea.
Just two months ago, Reuters reported that Japan protested after Chinese missiles landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Five ballistic missiles fired by China appeared to have landed in Japan's EEZ, Japanese defense minister Nobuo Kishi said Aug. 4, part of military exercises launched by China earlier in that day. The exercises, China's largest ever in the Taiwan Strait, began as scheduled at midday and included live-firing in the waters to the north, south and east of Taiwan, bringing tensions in the area to their highest in a quarter century.
In 2016 Japan's foreign ministry lodged a formal diplomatic protest with China regarding the construction of natural gas drilling platforms near a disputed boundary in the East China Sea, according to a Maritime Executive report. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said the Chinese were building the facilities for the development of gas fields along the median line between the nation's coastlines; there was no fixed, negotiated EEZ boundary between Japanese and Chinese territorial waters. Japan claimed the region at least up to the median line, while China asserted a claim based on the extent of its continental shelf. Japan asserted that China had more than a dozen gas development structures on the Chinese side of the median line, and as an EEZ had not yet been agreed, it is "regrettable that China is advancing unilateral development" in the area, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
10.04.2022
