Territory - Diaoyu Islands

Law of the Sea

An FM spokesman denied the existence of a secret agreement between China and Japan whereby Japan would not detain Chinese citizens who mounted the Diaoyu Islands while China would stop her ships from approaching the islands. He justified the fishing activities of Chinese fishermen by claiming that waters near Diaoyu are China's 'traditional fishing grounds''.

Meanwhile, Japan rejected a Chinese proposal to jointly develop offshore natural resources near the Diaoyu Islands. Japanese FM Seiji Maehara also denied that Japan had ever agreed to former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's 1978 proposal to shelve the territorial disputes over Diaoyu and leave the settlement of the issue to the next generation, as Japan continued to turn a blind eye to the elephant in the room by maintaining that "there exists no territorial dispute" over the Diaoyu Islands.