Tokyo rebuts China’s assertion remote Japan island in Pacific is a rock

Japan’s top government spokesman on Wednesday rejected China’s claim that a small remote Japanese island in the Pacific is a rock, saying its status as an island and Tokyo’s control over it have been “already established.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, calling China’s assertion “unfounded,” told a press conference that Okinotori Island is “an island defined under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and has an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf.”

Kihara’s remarks came a day after China said that sea areas surrounding Okinotori were not within Japan’s EEZ since it is “a rock rather than an island.” China’s denial of Japan’s position followed a live-fire drill by a Chinese warship on Sunday in the waters near the island.

Okinotori, Japan’s southernmost island located around 1,700 kilometers south of Tokyo, is a table reef with a circumference of 11 km. At high tide, it is completely submerged beneath the sea’s surface, except for two reinforced outcrops.

Kihara said Japan has “continuously exercised effective control” over the island since the then interior ministry issued a public notice in July 1931.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, a Chinese navy guided-missile destroyer held a machine gun-firing drill about 180 km southwest of Okinotori. It was the first time for the ministry to confirm such activities in the EEZ by a Chinese warship, it added.

© KYODO