China is taking its territorial dispute in the East China Sea underwater, investing heavily in maritime exploration capabilities to survey the ocean floor in a race to contain what it perceives as Japanese expansion in the region.
Underwater tensions between Beijing and Tokyo resurfaced this week when the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO), a multilateral body that charts the oceans, granted more names to Japan than it did to China.
Japan won approval for 34 names, including for the “Great Writers Seamount Province”, a group of 10 seamounts in the Philippine Sea south of Okinawa, now officially named after giants of Japanese literature such as the poet Matsuo Basho.