Economic profits and territorial disputes

Week 6

Economic profits and territorial disputes

 

Hello! From this time, the latter half of my blog “Japanese economy” begins. When I began to write this blog for the first time, this work is so hard and takes very long time, but through five times of the experience, I was used to gradually writing this blog. So, I do my best successively from this week.

 This time, I will write about relations of the economic profit and territorial problems. Japan has some territorial problems. Senkaku Islands, Northern Territories and the island of Takashima are disputed and became political problems between Japan and China, Russia and Korea. Why are their lands so important?

 There are some reasons some countries insist. First, those islands has property value themselves. Second, Exclusive economic zone (EEZ) are related. Do you know EEZ? The following is EEZ.

 An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a seazone prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea over which a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. It stretches from the seaward edge of the state's territorial sea out to 200 nautical miles from its coast. In colloquial usage, the term may include the territorial sea and even the continental shelf beyond the 200-mile limit.

 (Reference Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone )

Third, the right of oil resources are related. In particular, this is related to the problem of Senkaku islands between Japan and China. This time, I will introduce you this problem minutely in eyes of Japanese side.

The following picture is Senkaku Islands.

1. 

It is islands located in westernmost end of southwest islands and it is including the north islet (北小島), the south islet (南小島), the Kuba island (久場島), the Taisho island (大正島), the rock of okinokita and okinominami (沖ノ北岩、沖ノ南岩), Hise. (飛瀬). The position of those islands is following.

  

As historic process, after WW2 the territory in Japan were legally decided in San Francisco Peace Treaty, April,1952. The Senkaku Islands was put under U.S.’s administration as a part of southwest island based on the 3rd article of the treaty. The islands were contained in the area that was returned to Japan from U.S. in agreement for the return of Okinawa, May, 1972. So the Senkaku Islands compose part of southwest island that is included Japanese territory. Because of above reasons, Japan has insisted that these islands are Japanese territory. But, 1970’s, Chinese and Taiwan government began to insiste on their opinion about the islands. This is because in 1968, the agency of the United Nations investigated the possibility of oil deposit in the East China Sea and the fact that a lot of oil was deposited was discovered. Japanese government says that the insistence is wrong because the historic, geographic and geologic evidence that Chinese and Taiwan government refer to are not effective to its become effective for international law.

 Above explanation is about problem of Senkaku Islands. But this explanation is in eyes of Japanese side. Of course China have original insistence differ from Japanese ones. So I don’t know which insistence is really true. I live in Japan and I get only effective information for Japan. I hope that this problem to be solved with each countries’s assent. Thank you for reading my blog!