The Law of the Sea

Time out!

Over at Global Talk 21 Okumura Jun has already noted the stunner of the afternoon: The Yomiuri Shimbun's claim that the deal announced this week to jointly develop a bloc of potential gas/oil producing seabed in the East China Sea has been cancelled (What? Already? Before the first round of fistcuffs?). According to the article drilling in the joint development zone would be too provocative toward South Korea for the same reason that Japan sees the Shirakaba platform to be a provocation--the cross-line sucking out of hydrocarbons from under an area of abyssal mud the South Koreans say is theirs.

So, no sea of peace and prosperity aside from the Shirakaba platform investment promise -- this de re Yomiuri.

Now behind all this frou-frou, brouhaha and frantic handwaving is a deadline. Signatories to the Convention of the Law of the Sea have until May 2009 to delimit the extent of their continental shelves. Chinese and Japanese interests are of course not served by this international deadline: the matter of seabed sovereignty in the East China Sea is just too sensitive.

All of which makes the Tuesday split in between the Japan delegation's magnanimous attitude and the China delegation's militancy on the issue of a possible pushing back of the deadline on technical grounds all the more interesting...

Later - Whola! Ouch! Reading only the first paragraphs of an article and then the last sentence without reading the middle can get you into trouble. The joint development plan is not cancelled--just plans for joint development of the Asunaro field for the reasons stated above. The joint development area inside of the Japanese side of the median line is still on the table.

Bad MTC, trusting concluding paragraphs of Yomiuri articles without verifying!


Yuigahama Man
Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture
May 27, 2007
Photo credit: MTC

Defining victory

Yes, sometimes it does matter that your Minister of Foreign Affairs passed the bar exam while still an undergraduate:

Questioner: "Though it is my understanding that there have been many gas fields discovered on or around the mid-point line, why are Shirakaba and Asunaro the only fields mentioned? Why are the others not mentioned? In addition, the deputy spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday declared that Shirakaba is inside China's area of sovereignty and it has no relationship to any 'joint development.' What are your thoughts on this?

Foreign Minister Kōmura: "The northern region is not the Asunaro platform. Asunaro is slightly further south. Admittedly, there have been many gas & oil fields that have been problematic. However, as regards Shirakaba, which has been the biggest problem, it is being developed from a point that is slightly closer to the Chinese mainland than the midline we draw. The reason it became the biggest problem was the 'straw effect,' where the possibility of 'Aren't resources on the Japanese side being withdrawn too?' exists. I would like you to understand this is an attempt to tidy up the very biggest problem and then, 'as a symbol of a sea of peaceful cooperation and friendship, let us develop together a completely brand new area.'

As for remaining areas (of dispute) that is for continuing negotiations.

As for the Chinese declaration that 'This is not joint development,' I would like to say that this is a matter of definition. If the Chinese are saying 'This is not joint development,' I have no intention of filing a protest, saying 'No, no you are wrong.' At the end of the day, we come away from this winners -- with a committed investment by a Japanese corporation in an area on the Chinese side of the midline that the Chinese have already developed. Whether you want to call it 'joint development' or not call it 'joint development' -- I really don't care either way."

So cold, so smooth, so contemptuous.

You have a lawyer as foreign minister. Be happy.


Later - Here is the transcript of the press conference.

Final Reality MMVIII

In the spirit not at all related to current events in California, do you Hu Jintao take Fukuda Yasuo to be your lifelong partner in oil & gas development?

Japan, China to jointly develop gas field: statement
AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan and China agreed Wednesday to jointly develop a disputed gas field in the East China Sea, resolving a longstanding row between the Asian powers, a Japanese foreign ministry statement said.

Japanese companies will participate in the existing development of the Chunxiao gas field, which Japan calls Shirakaba, a statement said.

"To make the East China Sea a sea of peace and cooperation and friendship, Japan and China have agreed to cooperate," the statement said...

Okumura Jun has written at length and with erudition about his fears regarding the agreement's inviting speculation that Japan is not willing to defend its full claim to the seabed in between the geographic mid-point line and the Okinawa Trough.

My view on the agreement is more sanguine and two-fold.

First, in terms of the conduct of international affairs, China has had a history of losing to Japan whenever the two sides argued about sovereignty over a bit of territory. I could understand a Chinese wish to hold border talks with everybody except the Japanese, preferring to handle those boundary disputes through a hearkening back to the Edo Period practice of keeping the line between the Sinitic and Nipponic spheres vague...rather than revisiting the chain of conflicts from the 1874 Japanese invasion of Taiwan onwards--fights that erupted largely from the early Meiji government's ingesting wholesale the praxis associated with the Westphalian state system.

Second, since it is impossible to send even one cubic meter of the natural gas under the East China Sea to Japan (there is a trough in the way) without sending the gas first to the coast of China via a seabed pipeline, the fight over development of the gas resources was largely about pride (hokori)...and when talking about the importance of pride in economic negotiations, one has to remember Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #109:

Dignity and empty sack is worth the sack.

Japan gets the chance to call the East China seabed its own without fighting a shooting war with the Chinese over it, the possibility of linking up with the Chinese pipeline network and a share in an existing platform.

That's a net gain.

-----------------------

Most of the canonical Ferengi Rules of Acquisition can be found here.

The story bringing this whole post full circle is here.