China aims for US to hit rock bottom in Asia

[dArKeR]

An uninhabited Pacific reef 1,600km due south of Tokyo makes an unlikely battlefield. But wars have been fought over less. And Okinotori Shima, as this hazard to shipping is known, is rapidly becoming a focal point of rising tension between China and Japan.

Only two small outcrops of the reef, sovereign Japanese territory that is administratively part of Tokyo, remain above water at high tide.

But Japan says that is enough to make it legally an island. To underpin its position, it has spent US$250 million shoring up Okinotori's twin peaks with cement.

Japan claims an exclusive economic zone around Okinotori stretching hundreds of kilometers in every direction under the 1982 Law of the Sea. The total area is bigger than the whole of Japan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2005/04/08/2003249626