China warns Japan in tussle over gas By Mariko Sanchanta in Tokyo Published: July 2 2004 5:00 / Last Updated: July 2 2004 5:00
China has issued its strongest warning yet to Japan about the exploration for natural gas in the East China Sea, as the dispute between the two countries escalates to unprecedented levels.
The two countries are at loggerheads over China's development of a potentially lucrative natural gas field which lies near the border of Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea. In response, Japan this week announced it would launch its own exploration studies next week.
"Japan should consider the bigger picture of maintaining relations between the two countries and should consider stability in the East China Sea area," said Zhang Qiyue, China's foreign ministry spokeswoman.
A Japanese foreign ministry official responded: "We have no intention of inflaming public sentiment. We hope that the Chinese side will deal with this in a calculated and quiet manner."
The field is estimated to contain up to 200bn cubic metres of natural gas, and Japanese energy officials have said privately there are very good prospects of sizeable oil reserves as well.
Both Japan and China are in a race to reduce their dependence on Middle Eastern countries in energy procurement. Japan, which has almost no natural resources, has made it a strategic aim to diversify supplies, with increasing use of gas a priority. China is aiming to reduce its reliance on coal for both economic and environmental reasons, and wants to increase its consumption of natural gas.
Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan's trade minister, flew over the Chinese natural gas complex on Wednesday to observe the development. Last month Tokyo lodged a complaint with Beijing saying the Chinese gas project could violate the boundaries of the Japanese EEZ, siphoning off natural gas from it.
The two countries have also argued about the exact boundary of the EEZ.
Japan says it is the line equidistant from the coasts of both countries, while China has said it extends to the end of the continental shelf.
The gas field, in fact, is located 4km from the centre line, in China's EEZ.
The Chinese government signed contracts with oil development companies in China and other countries including Britain and the US, in August 2003, without informing Japan of its plans. China has suggested that the two countries jointly develop the field, but Japan has rejected the proposal.
US plans huge show of force in Pacific Seven aircraft carriers to move within striking distance of China; Taiwan forces slated to join in drill.
The US plan to do this after mid-July, in the Pacific Ocean near China, is a message to Beijing for its threat to use force to stop Taiwanese independence. #msg-3471674
CHINA PLANS MAJOR WARGAMES IN TAIWAN STRAIT 2004-07-04
HONG KONG—China will carry out large-scale joint military exercises on its coastline opposite Taiwan this summer to prepare its army, navy, and air force for a forced landing on the self-governing island, which Beijing has threatened to invade should it declare itself independent, RFA reports.
The amphibious landing exercises are planned for July on Dongshan Island in the southeastern province of Fujian, just 150 nautical miles from the Taiwan-controlled island of Penghu, the official Communist Party People’s Daily said on its Web site Sunday.
“The upcoming exercises will be a military demonstration implying a considerable degree of ‘initiative’ and ‘offense,’ and it is one of the stratagems by which to apply military pressure against Taiwan,” the paper quoted unnamed military experts as saying.
“It also shows that our Army is becoming increasingly aware that ‘air superiority’ is the paramount ideology in modern warfare, and that the PLA is emphasizing the development of its air forces,” it said.
The exercises will focus on methods of gaining air supremacy over Taiwan, the paper said, which is equipped with F-16, Mirage 2000-5, Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF), and F-5 fighters. The mainland’s air force has Su-27, Su-30, Jian-10, Jian-8 II, and modified Jian-7 aircraft.
Although mainland China possesses a much greater total number of fighter aircraft, the two sides are basically equal in terms of the number and quality of their third-generation fighter planes, Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po said of the exercises. “One cannot say that the mainland has gained absolute air supremacy,” it said.
Practically all the advanced weaponry China possesses will be put in use in the military exercises, including Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jets purchased from Russia, the People’s Daily said.
“This exercise will be aimed at sending a substantial warning to ‘Taiwan separatists.’” Nuclear-powered submarines, warships, the latest model missile destroyers, and a guided missile brigade would also be involved in the exercises. “It’s not a preventive military maneuver against Taiwan independence as they were in the past,” the report said.
China considers Taiwan part of its territory awaiting reunification, and routinely carries out military maneuvers as a form of saber rattling against the island. It recently warned Taiwan President Chen Shuibian that he was walking “a dangerous road” towards independence as a sovereign state.
But military analysts said the exercises were not large enough to signify an escalation of tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
The island has been governed separately from China since the end of a civil war between the Nationalist Kuomintang and Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949. #####
As it turns out, the seven-carriers-to-China story was not only inflammatory, it was also false. In fact, after the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan returns to port in San Diego early next month, only two carriers, not seven, will float in Pacific waters: the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk and the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, according to Capt. John Singley, top spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, in an exclusive on-the-record interview.
By Tom Plate Professor at University of California, Los Angeles Director of Asia Pacific Media Network
LOS ANGELES _ Anyone who knows anything about China knows that it’s not just its current government but its people, too, who are ultra-protective and ultra-sensitive on the Taiwan issue. They’d fight _ bet on it _ to keep alive the hope of eventual union with that feisty offshore island that maintains its wary distance from the mainland. And so, when a sensational story broke recently that the United States had plans for a massive show of naval power in the Chinese seas, it was a true blockbuster, perhaps a portent of world war.
After all, wars can start over serious mutual misperceptions. In 1996, the mainland executed an ill-advised measure of gunboat and missile diplomacy in an effort to intimidate the island’s voters from electing as its president Chen Shui-bian, whose party’s most prominent platform plank was formal independence from the mainland. In response, a pair of U.S. aircraft carrier groups was sent close to China to help calm the roiling political waters.
But they did not actually stick their noses into the strait _ the 100-mile wide sea that separates the mainland from Taiwan. This didn’t happen after then-U.S Ambassador to China James Sasser in Beijing, greatly alarmed, urgently telephoned President Bill Clinton to warn that the Pentagon’s running a carrier group through the Taiwan Strait might well trigger a Chinese military response. In the end, the carrier groups wisely steered away from strait waters, China quieted down, and, a few years later, Chen was elected. In the meantime, China-U.S. relations improved enormously.
Last week, though, it was starting to look like 1996 all over again. Rumors began to circulate about a mammoth U.S. military exercise off Taiwan, Operation Summer Pulse ’04, that would involve seven carrier groups, more than half of the U.S. carrier fleet. In effect, U.S. naval forces would be shaking an enormous stick in Beijing's face, signaling the folly of military action over Taiwan.
The sensational story was apparently first listed as fact on a Chinese-language Web site, then published in at least two newspapers in Asia and two in the United States, including in the ordinarily cautious Los Angeles Times. These accounts spawned a predictable firestorm in Asia about new U.S. “gunboat diplomacy” in various Internet blogs and Web pages.
As well such an allegation should: China insists on ultimate sovereignty over Taiwan and argues that any Western encouragement of Taiwan separatism would undermine regional stability and delay a peaceful solution of the issue. Indeed, this “one China” policy has been accepted by the United Nations (as well as the United States and most of the world).
Beijing thus has a point. And so given this reality, the proper task of modern global diplomacy is to discourage China from ever attempting to establish sovereignty by force and to deter Taiwan from acting publicly in such a way that Beijing becomes convinced that the military option is the mainland’s only hope of ever realizing unification. China’s military overlord Jiang Zemin recently said this needs to be accomplished by 2020, which means (on my reading) that Beijing is not exactly saying, well, by tomorrow.
As it turns out, the seven-carriers-to-China story was not only inflammatory, it was also false. In fact, after the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan returns to port in San Diego early next month, only two carriers, not seven, will float in Pacific waters: the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk and the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, according to Capt. John Singley, top spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, in an exclusive on-the-record interview.
The false story, whipped into a frenzy, upset many in the U.S. military perhaps as much as the Chinese. For one thing, the Pacific Command has been working industriously since the scary 1996 cross-straits stare-down to get to know its Chinese counterparts and develop a measure of mutual trust. Then-Pacific Commander Joseph Prueher, now retired, personally visited China for useful sessions with Chinese counterparts. His successors continued that policy, though the frequency of contact has been foolishly cut back by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Second, rumors of a massive U.S. military buildup (for which America does have the capability) only play into the hands of China’s hawks in the People’s Liberation Army, who beg Beijing for more money for more arms, which plays into the hands of Taiwan’s hawks (same reason), which plays into the hands of anti-China circles in the United States who want more funding for more weapons _ all of which delights U.S. arms merchants. It is through this kind of whirl-wind of rumor, fear and innuendo that the vile atmosphere of a vicious, costly and unneeded arms race in Asia is spawned.
In international relations and public diplomacy, the news media play a critical role. They can prudently raise intelligent questions, or rashly raise international temperatures. They can carefully report the news or puff up a tidbit of sensationalism. The press owes it to world peace to behave more responsibly and not take its cues from sensational cyberspace sources. War _ or potential war _ is serious business, as Iraq today reminds us.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
