because of the possibility of claiming 200 n.m. Exclusive Economic Zones around them.
China has reserved the right to use force and threat to 'recover' the Senkakus. In 1992, China's assertions of territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas included the Senkakus. But it's one thing for China to use threats against countries in the South China Sea, which do not enjoy the advantages of extended nuclear deterrence. Use of force or threat against Japan in relation to the Senkakus would be an entirely different matter. The United States takes no position on the ownership of the Senkakus, but the islands were included in the Okinawa reversion documents of 1972 as territories 'administered by Japan'. China is unlikely to indulge in overt nuclear blackmail against Japan; to do so would be to invite US intervention in an area where China is disproportionately weak
Still, the Chinese continue to probe. Tensions between China and Japan were renewed in late 1995 when China began sending ocean surveillance ships and oil drilling rigs into waters close to the islands. 13 In July 96, a right-wing Japanese student group repaired a lighthouse on one of the islands. That stirred up nationalist passions in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Initially, China seemed pleased by this demonstration of Han solidarity against Japan. But then Beijing started to worry about what forces it might be unleashing in its own society, when student groups (now using e mail) complained that the leadership was not defending Chinese territory with sufficient vigor. The involvement of right-wing extremists in Japan also raised the dangers of aroused chauvinist sentiment there.
Thus far, China has met resistance in its eastward probes across the Taiwan strait, and in the East China Sea. Softer targets lie to the south, in the South China Sea, which China is seeking to turn into a Chinese lake.
1The 1957 Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite had a similar effect on the United States. The payload was not important. What mattered was the great leap in missile technology which been revealed, and hence US vulnerability to nuclear attack.
2 Maritime power means more than naval power-surface ships and submarines. It also includes naval aviation and amphibious capability-e.g.US marines; Soviet naval infantry.
3 China has built a satellite monitoring station on Tarawa, in Kiribati. (Formerly the Gilbert Islands) See Christian Science Monitor, 30 October 1977. hnp：//www.Stratfor.com/news/articles/a0397.asp Its purpose seems to be partly to monitor the US long range missile testing range on Kwajelein in the MarshalIs.
4 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard： American Supremacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, BasicBooks, 1997, p.88.
5 This point is overlooked by Brzezinski.
6 Russia is China's major source of fighter aircraft, air-to-air missiles, ground attack missiles, submarines, and supersonic anti-ship missiles. Richard D Fisher, "How America's Friends are Building China's Military Power", Heritage Backgrounder No 1146, 5 November 1997
