anon45
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Japanese government agrees to buy disputed islands - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.vancouversun.com/Beijing+vows+will+stop+Japanese+plan+islands/7198618/story.html
This must be the reason martian started that car boycott thread nonsense.
Lets see the fireworks!
SEOUL -- Japan's central government has agreed to buy a group of uninhabited islands that also are claimed by China and Taiwan, Japanese media reported Wednesday, potentially increasing regional tension over the simmering territorial dispute.
In a long-discussed deal, the central government will pay the Japanese family who owns the islands 2.05 billion yen ($26.2 million) for three of the islands in the East China Sea, the reports said.
A government spokesman refused to confirm the deal, which was widely reported by major Japanese dailies and the Kyodo news agency in articles that cited unnamed government sources. Japan's government often briefs domestic reporters on background in advance of major decisions.
The nationalization of the hotly disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, comes at a time when Japan's government is struggling to maintain civil relations with its giant neighbor and placate increasingly influential nationalists who are wary of China's rise.
Although this move figures to inflame already-strained relations with China, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda intended it as a way to maintain relative calm, security experts say. The central government purchase trumps a competing bid from the Tokyo metropolitan government, whose ultra-nationalist governor, Shintaro Ishihara, was raising money to buy the islands.
Mr. Ishihara has spoken about stationing Japan's Self-Defense Forces on the islands and building harbors for fishing boats; such moves would raise the risk of confrontation with Chinese vessels that often roam the waters. The central government, which has rented and administered the islands even before this purchase, prefers a hands-off approach: It keeps them uninhabited and almost always denies requests for boats to land. Japan would maintain that no-development policy after the purchase, which should be finalized by the end of this month, the Japanese news reports said.
"Our basic approach is to continue to maintain and manage the islands peacefully and stably," Mr. Noda said in a news conference last month.
The islands -- a supposedly rich ground for fishing and natural resources -- have turned into a flash point in recent months, part of a region-wide escalation of territorial disputes that drew the attention of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during her ongoing trip to Asia.
This summer, China sent three ships to the area. In response, Japan asked its ambassador to briefly return from Beijing. There were back-and-forth landings by activists. Anti-Japanese protests broke out in numerous Chinese cities, with thousands taking to the streets. And, last weekend, a group of Tokyo city officials and experts surveyed the islands without landing on them, measuring water depth, scouting out locations for a dock and declaring that Japan's territorial claim is "undeniable."
Japan formally incorporated the rocky island chain as part of its territory in 1895; the United States administered the land after World War II but returned it to Japan in 1971.
Japan says China offered no objections at that time and only raised its claim several years later, amid news that the islands could have rich fossil-fuel reserves. But a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the islands have been "China's inherent territory since ancient times."
In an editorial Wednesday in the China Daily, Jin Yongming, a law scholar with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Ocean of China, wrote that Japan's actions have "infringed on China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests, and poisoned bilateral relations."
"Japan is worried that China's continued rise ... will end its illegal possession of the Diaoyu Islands," Mr. Jin wrote.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Beijing+vows+will+stop+Japanese+plan+islands/7198618/story.html
This must be the reason martian started that car boycott thread nonsense.
Lets see the fireworks!
today, as an inspection tour near the disputed Tiaoyutai Islands, amid the escalating East China Sea sovereignty row. Accompanied by ministers, legislators and media personnel, the president will reaffirm the nation's sovereignty rights to the Tiaoyutais. 
