Japan's Embassy in China issued a statement today (August 28): "The behavior of the Chinese side building new structures west of the median line in the East China Sea. In the absence of a clear demarcation of the EEZ and continental shelf boundaries in the East China Sea, Japan expresses great regret over the Chinese side's unilateral development activities in this area. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made a strong protest to the Chinese Embassy in Japan and once again strongly urges the Chinese side to respond as soon as possible to Japan's proposal to restart negotiations on concluding an international agreement regarding the implementation of the 2008 consensus on the development of resources in the East China Sea."

[Clever] Comment: This matter must be thoroughly clarified. On the issue of oil and gas resource development in the East China Sea, both sides should explain their positions and follow reason and fairness.

From a geographical perspective, the Chinese side of the East China Sea belongs to a shallow continental shelf, where the water depth is mostly within 200 meters, and the geological conditions are relatively stable, making it very suitable for laying pipelines and conducting oil and gas field exploitation operations, with controllable costs and considerable returns. However, the Japanese side is the Okinawa Trough, where the water depth increases sharply to 1000-2000 meters. Such depth makes the extraction extremely difficult and the cost so high that it is almost economically unviable. Under these circumstances, Japan itself cannot carry out extraction, yet it recklessly obstructs China from extracting resources on the Chinese side of the median line. This behavior is simply unreasonable.

Perhaps Japan has two purposes in doing this: First, it wants to use this issue as a bargaining chip in the delimitation negotiation, ultimately forcing China to agree to the median line as the boundary of the exclusive economic zone. Second, seeing China carrying out extraction, which it cannot do, it hopes "you eat the meat, give me some broth", and there is no doubt that it may later demand to share the profits from China's extraction, not wanting to just watch.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1841669246063623/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author himself.