China, Japan: Getting sensible, finally

After years of dispute over gas fields in the East China Sea, China and Japan have reached an agreement, with both sides announcing on 18 June that a deal had been struck on two of the disputed fields during Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan in May.

The dispute over offshore gas extraction in the East China Sea began five years ago, after China started to develop a newly discovered gas field close to what Japan considers its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Even though China does not drill gas directly within Japan's EEZ, the latter worried that China would effectively extract Japanese resources, as the field reached well beyond the EEZ's border and might be connected to fields Japan claims ownership of.

But the problem is more complicated. China and Japan have never agreed on a border line in the East China Sea. Referring to maritime law, Japan claims its EEZ reaches as far as 200 sea miles (some 370 kilometers) off its coast, whereas China, also referring to international law, claims economic rights for the entire continental shelf. The shelf reaches far into the Japanese-claimed area.

In the current agreement, the two countries agreed to table the border issue for the time being and promised to refrain from unilaterally exploiting the disputed areas until a resolution was found.

The new agreement affects two of the disputed gas fields: Shirakaba/Chunxiao and Asunaro/Longjin. In the case of the Shirakaba/Chunxiao field, which China has already started to develop, Japan has been invited to invest in its development and in turn receive its share of the profits. As for the Asunaro/Longjin gas field, China and Japan have agreed on establishing a joint development zone.

The agreement represents a milestone in the improvement of bilateral relations between China and Japan. At the time China started developing the first gas fields, then-Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi aroused anger among the Chinese with his visits to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine. In the past, disputes over Japanese history textbooks and the acknowledgment of Japan's war crimes also strained China-Japan relations.

Koizumi's successor, former prime minister Shinzo Abe, surprised everyone by visiting China shortly after he took office. That visit was the first high-level bilateral meeting between the two countries in four years, and observers predicted a new era in China-Japan relations. However, the short-lived Abe government, too, raised suspicion with its nationalistic stances and revisionist policies.

After years of ideologically loaded tensions, the current agreement between Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Hu is an instance of pragmatic cooperation.

The improvement in bilateral relations has so far mainly been symbolic. The planned number of summit meetings between the two countries is remarkably high this year. After Hu's visit to Japan in May, the Chinese government is also invited to participate in the G8 summit hosted by Japan in July. In addition, Fukuda is expected to attend the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. Earlier this year, the Japanese government took extraordinary measures to prevent pro-Tibet activists, whose numbers are large in Japan, from disturbing the Olympic torch relay.

The current deal over the gas fields, however, is the first substantial result of improved bilateral relations. It presents a balanced compromise on an international distributional conflict. If the deal is successful, we can expect more of the same to come.

In a sensible move to find a pragmatic solution to one of their common problems, China and Japan have left ideological sensitivities behind. In times of high energy cost, the two energy-consuming giants have realized that it may be more beneficial to compromise and to jointly harvest the resources just off their coasts instead of further playing for all or nothing at high political risk. (See Axel Berkofsky, Sino-Japanese relations recovering.)

Some analysts have argued that the importance of the gas reserves in question is low, as their oil equivalent would only suffice to meet Japan's demand for energy for three weeks. The deal is of strategic and symbolic importance, however, because securing energy supply is a top foreign policy priority for both.

The agreement also shows that the political climate in East Asia has become more favorable to international cooperation. Good relations between China and Japan are crucial for East Asian security, which depends very much on the two regional powers. As long as China and Japan were at odds, regional relations looked bleak.

With relations between Japan and North Korea improving and cross-Strait ties between Taiwan and mainland China on the mend, the gas field agreement between China and Japan signals that the sun is again rising over East Asia.