Japanese Cars Collateral Damage In War Of Words Over Islands

I'm not sure if someone said it earlier or I read it on ForeignPolicy.com, but the sabre rattling of these islands has mostly to do with control of the East China Sea. There international laws where you control the sea X amount of miles from your land (14 maybe) and if the Chinese gain control of these islands their sphere of influence extends deeper into the ocean and they gain de-facto control of the sea lanes... there's also undersea mineral rights since you receive X mouth of miles around your land to consider, namely undersea oil. I just read an article last night where Wang Yilin, Chairman of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, made the bold claim and I quote "large-scale deep-water rigs are our mobile national territory and a strategic weapon". Another possibility is these rocks would also be a great place to stash surface-to-ship missiles just in case any local navies get a little uppity... Geopolitics are fascinating, aren't they? EDIT: Speaking of underwater mineral rights there are those who now claim the 1982 Falklands War was actually fought for control of possible undersea oil deposits near the islands, deposits which as we speak are being explored and exploited by British companies.

@28-Cars-Later I think it's possible, maybe probable, that minerals besides petroleum, metals and hydrates extracted from the ocean floor will eventually exceed the value of offshore oil. I expect environmentalists will oppose such mining even if it's only grabbing manganese nodes exposed on the sea bed, but we humans are getting better and better at exploiting this world's resources and the wealth in and under the oceans is too great to be ignored.

Unlike the Japanese, the Germans were actually relatively benign in how they treated the Chinese during the period leading up to WWII. In fact, the Germans were appalled at the massacres and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese against Chinese civilians - to the point of offering shelter. The average Chinese citizen may not be as blindly patriotic as we assume, but I am certain that they would still put even the corrupt Chinese Communist Party higher in the moral rankings than the Japanese government. I say this as a Western-educated, Hong Kong-born Canadian who actually quite likes Japanese cars, movies and culture (well, excluding the Bushido craziness that led to all that bloodshed). Large swathes of the Japanese government and establishment continue to deny the significance and even existence of the Rape of Nanking massacre (akin to Holocaust denial), and the ugly truth of "Comfort Women". Until they own up to their sins (which the Germans have done), they will forever be viewed with at least some degree of suspicion and hostility in the likes of China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, etc.

@daiheadjai Agreed. Not owning up to past sins is one thing. Enshrining convicted war criminals in shrines like Yasukuni even today is a whole another ball of wax... I've worked with numerous Japanese exchange students for the past 15-20 years and an appalling number of them sincerely believe they were the victims in the war. As a modern democracy, there's no excuse for that sort of thing.