JAPAN VOTE ON DISPUTED ISLANDS TO INTENSIFY TENSIONS WITH CHINA

A bill that changes the status of an island chain claimed by both Japan and China was approved by a city council in Okinawa on Monday, a move that threatens to inflame tensions between the two Asian powers, Brad Lendon and Junko Ogura reporting for CNN on Monday, June 22, 2020.

The Ishigaki City Council in Japan's Okinawa prefecture approved the legislation that changes the administrative status of the uninhabited island group, 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo. The islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China, have been administered by Japan since 1972, but both Tokyo and Beijing say their claims to the group date back hundreds of years.

China warned before Monday's vote against any change in the status quo over the islands. "Diaoyu island and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territories," a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday said. "We ask Japan to abide by the spirit of the four-principle consensus, avoid creating new incidents on the Diaoyu Islands issue, and take practical actions to maintain the stability of the East China Sea situation."

One of those four principles was that Japan acknowledges that sovereignty over the islands was in dispute. But the bill passed Monday in Ishigaki brushed off any concerns of how the move might be perceived in Beijing. "The approval of this case did not take into consideration the influence of other countries, but was considered to improve the efficiency of administrative procedures," the council said. Earlier, Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported the bill "asserts the islands are part of Japanese territory." It's the kind of language that rankles in Beijing, which has been claiming 90 % of the South China Sea as its own, down to the Natunas Islands in Indonesia, and is tangling with Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei Malaysia and the Philppines. Last week, its troops clashed with Indian soldiers in the Ladakh area of the Himalayas, with New Delhi admitting the deaths of 20 of its men.