Two rocks surrounded by coral, with a complete land measurement of lower than 10 sq. meters (roughly 108 sq. toes) at excessive tide, are your complete foundation on which Japan claims a 150,000-square-mile unique financial zone, an space practically the dimensions of Japan itself. The uninhabited characteristic, positioned greater than 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, is named Okinotori.
In late July, Japan protested Sino-Russian live-fire drills held inside the unique financial zone it claims round Okinotori. Tokyo cited the protection dangers the drills posed to close by vessels, however its broader objection was to Beijing’s declare that Okinotori is merely a rock entitled to no unique financial zone or continental shelf, versus the island Japan claims it’s.
Whereas wanting like a slender dispute over the authorized standing of a tiny offshore characteristic, this episode is best understood as some extent the place East Asia’s authorized and strategic contests intersect. Legally, this quarrel is a miniature of the area’s ongoing contest over maritime order: the 2016 arbitration ruling that China vehemently rejects is, mockingly, what most undermines Japan’s declare that Okinotori is an island, and Tokyo, Beijing, and Washington every invoke the regulation of the ocean the place it fits them.
Strategically, China now confronts a simultaneity of tensions throughout the East China Sea, South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait, heightened by deepening Japanese-Philippine coordination and an rising alignment between Tokyo, Manila, and Taipei. Beijing’s response to this panorama has settled into an more and more discernible sample, with Okinotori being one in every of its nodes. At every level of rivalry, China pairs authorized devices with expanded bodily presence: it delegitimizes its rival’s place, attire its personal in legality, and backs its place with intensified drills and patrols tailor-made to spice up deterrence in every theater.
What Is Disputed and What Is Not
The authorized standing of Okinotori is on the core of the latest quarrel, however this subject is neither new nor loud: it has smoldered quietly for 20 years. Japan insists that Okinotori — or, its most popular identify, Okinotorishima (shima means “island”) — is an island. Underneath the United Nations Conference on Regulation of the Sea Article 121, a naturally fashioned characteristic that stays above water at excessive tide and might maintain human habitation or financial lifetime of its personal qualifies as an island entitled to a 200-nautical-mile unique financial zone and a continental shelf. On that foundation, Japan claims an unique financial zone round Okinotori and, in its 2008 submission to the Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a continental shelf.
China, South Korea, and Taiwan all reject Okinotori’s standing as an island. Beijing first objected in 2004, and since 2009, China and South Korea have every filed notes verbales with the Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in response to Japan’s submission, contending that the characteristic is a “rock” incapable of sustaining human habitation or financial lifetime of its personal and subsequently producing no unique financial zone or continental shelf. As a result of the Fee has no mandate to determine whether or not Okinotori is an island or a rock, this query has remained unresolved. Slightly than endorse a continental shelf premised on the characteristic, the Fee’s 2012 advice deferred any resolution on the portion of Japan’s submission primarily based on Okinotori till the objections in China’s and South Korea’s notes are resolved.
Taiwan, although not a celebration to the U.N. Conference on Regulation of the Sea, likewise objects to Japan’s place. Its dispute with Tokyo has arguably been essentially the most distinguished of the three, centering on fishing rights inside Japan’s claimed unique financial zone. In spring 2016, after the Japanese coast guard seized a Taiwanese fishing vessel close to Okinotori, the Ma Ying-jeou (Kuomintang, or Nationalist Get together) authorities protested Japan’s declare and dispatched coast guard vessels to guard Taiwanese fishing operations, straining ties with Tokyo. Because the Democratic Progressive Get together took energy later that yr, Taipei has stored a decrease profile on Okinotori however has not modified its official place that “the rights to the waters close to Okinotori will stay in dispute.”
One level wants emphasis: Not one of the three neighbors challenges Japan’s sovereignty over Okinotori. Every has its personal sovereignty disputes with Japan within the East China Sea or the Sea of Japan, however Okinotori will not be amongst them. What’s contested is its authorized standing and the maritime zones that standing can generate.
Why Japan’s Case Is Weak
The 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling, which discovered that lots of the Spratly options China claimed as islands are merely rocks underneath the regulation of the ocean, instantly undermines Japan’s personal declare that Okinotori is an island. Though Japan instantly endorsed the ruling, it has been cautious to body it as binding solely between China and the Philippines, relevant to the precise disputes the tribunal truly selected however to not Okinotori.
Japan’s case is weak and legally troublesome to maintain as a result of the ruling’s check is normal. Particularly, the ruling states: “Does the characteristic in its pure type have the potential of sustaining human habitation or an financial life? If not, it’s a rock.” Okinotori can’t move this check by any measure. By 2016, Japan had spent over $600 million defending Okinotori from erosion and constructing an observatory to observe passing ships. However the characteristic, in its pure type, has to this point not sustained human habitation or financial exercise of its personal.
This level will not be new. As Jerome Cohen and Peter Dutton, each main law-of-the-sea students, famous shortly earlier than the arbitration ruling,
the concept that Okinotori is entitled to regulate the financial assets of a sea protecting roughly 150,000 sq. statute miles … has at all times been preposterous. Regardless of how generously the Philippine arbitration tribunal may interpret the phrases of UNCLOS [the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea] Article 121.3 within the context of the South China Sea, it won’t justify Japan’s declare.
Notably, they utilized the identical yardstick to each Beijing and Tokyo, calling Japan’s Okinotori declare and China’s South China Sea claims equally “absurd” and “unpersuasive” makes an attempt to “seize extra water house than both is entitled to.”
This weak authorized basis might clarify a evident omission: Japan protested the Sino-Russian drills with out calling them illegal. For one factor, america and its allies extensively maintain that overseas army operations in different states’ unique financial zones are lawful makes use of of the ocean. Extra importantly, any objection on unique financial zone grounds presumes Okinotori generates such a zone within the first place, a premise Japan can’t persuasively defend. To accuse China of violating Japan’s unique financial zone would solely have precipitated lawfare with Beijing surrounding whether or not that zone legitimately exists. Beijing, recognizing no such zone round Okinotori, exploited precisely the Japanese weak place and insisted that the workout routines have been carried out on the “excessive seas” and “absolutely according to worldwide regulation.”
Why Right here? Why Now?
On the floor, the Sino-Russian workout routines seem like a direct response to Japan’s half in a joint assertion marking the tenth anniversary of the 2016 arbitration ruling. In its reply, the Chinese language overseas ministry requested rhetorically, with out naming Japan:
If the “award” have been to be taken as an ordinary, many international locations’ islands and reefs can be denied the premise for claiming maritime rights and pursuits … [H]ave these international locations supporting the “award” voluntarily waived the maritime rights and pursuits deriving from their related islands and reefs?
Extra pointedly nonetheless, after Japanese overseas minister Motegi Toshimitsu issued a standalone assertion on the anniversary, China summoned Japanese diplomats and warned it will “reply firmly and forcefully to Japan’s provocations.”
However China’s present of pressure was greater than a pushback in opposition to Japan’s anniversary assertion. It got here as a hardened response to Japan’s deepening involvement within the South China Sea and its tightening safety partnership with the Philippines. This partnership took form within the early 2010s, as tensions between China and its two rival claimants rose in each seas on the similar time: within the East China Sea, the 2010 fishing trawler collision, the 2012 Diaoyu/Senkaku nationalization disaster, and China’s 2013 declaration of an air protection identification zone; within the South China Sea, the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff and, from 2014, China’s blocking of Philippine resupply to Second Thomas Shoal.
In opposition to this backdrop, Tokyo steadily expanded maritime safety cooperation with Manila, starting with the strategic use of its Official Improvement Help to finance maritime capacity-building packages — together with the switch of 10 coast guard patrol ships for the Philippines — and accelerating after 2022 with the creation of the Official Safety Help devoted to strengthening companions’ capabilities to “forestall unilateral makes an attempt to alter the established order by pressure.” The 2025 Reciprocal Entry Settlement and the 2026 Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Settlement sure the 2 even nearer.
Watching these developments warily, Chinese language analysts warned that in constructing a “maritime surveillance system focusing on China and the capability to intervene within the South China Sea disputes,” Japan and the Philippines “underestimated China’s resolve to defend its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and pursuits,” and that the partnership might additional deepen as U.S. commitments to allies look much less dependable underneath the second Trump administration.
The workout routines have been seemingly additionally meant as a warning to Tokyo over a more recent subject: its maritime boundary delimitation talks with Manila — launched in Might 2026 and protecting waters east of Taiwan — which Beijing denounces as encroaching on Chinese language maritime rights. Taipei’s response was intentionally calm. The Lai Ching-te (Democratic Progressive Get together) authorities reaffirmed Taiwan’s “sovereign rights underneath worldwide regulation and the regulation of the ocean,” however dismissed any concern that the talks would hurt Taiwan, including that Beijing “has no proper to touch upon Taiwan’s insurance policies … a lot much less converse on behalf of Taiwan.” Nevertheless, excluded from talks over waters overlapping its personal claims and selecting to not take actions to press these claims itself, Taipei left a vacuum into which Beijing conveniently stepped, invoking its One China precept to claim the rights on Taiwan’s behalf and sending its coast guard vessels to patrol the realm east of Taiwan.
Stress-Examined for a Multifront Predicament?
Considered in East Asia’s broader strategic context, the Sino-Japanese quarrel over Okinotori and the Sino-Russian joint workout routines there look much less like an remoted episode than one node in an more and more coherent Chinese language response to simultaneous strain throughout the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.
Within the East China Sea, tensions have been escalating since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s 2025 remarks {that a} Taiwan emergency may threaten Japan’s survival. The flare-up was foreshadowed as early as 2021 when Japanese political leaders started explicitly articulating Taiwan’s significance to Japan’s safety, and once more in 2022 when China’s army response to Nancy Pelosi’s go to landed 5 ballistic missiles in Japan’s unique financial zone. Within the South China Sea, frontline confrontations and clashes with the Philippines have intensified since 2023. And throughout the Taiwan Strait, tensions have elevated steadily for the reason that 2024 inauguration of Lai Ching-te, who has taken a harder line towards Beijing’s strain marketing campaign than his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, and whom Beijing regards as a dedicated pro-independence determine.
Coincident tensions on China’s maritime periphery aren’t new. What’s new is that Beijing’s rival claimants are actually actively connecting all three fronts, turning coincidence right into a looming geostrategic risk. Since 2025, the Philippines and Japan have floated a “one-theater” idea that treats the East and South China Seas as a single operational house. And the leaders of each Japan and the Philippines have steered in latest months that their international locations would seemingly be drawn into any combat over Taiwan — remarks that alarmed Beijing.
That is exactly the safety panorama China’s strategists have lengthy cautioned about — a “chain response” or “three-sea linkage” during which rival claimants coordinate with each other and with america to ratchet up strain or open battle on a number of fronts whereas Beijing wants to focus on Taiwan. Chinese language strategists have a solution to this problem, albeit not a cushty one. Canonical army writings, together with the varied editions of Science of Army Technique from China’s Academy of Army Science and Nationwide Protection College, maintain that whereas China ought to make use of each political, financial, and diplomatic means to forestall these fronts from igniting collectively, it have to be ready to combat on these phrases if prevention fails: concentrating on the first strategic route (understood to imply Taiwan) whereas holding the road in secondary ones (right here, the 2 seas, amongst others).
These writings counsel a China gearing up for a multifront predicament, and that preparation now seems to comply with an more and more discernible sample. At every level of rivalry, China pairs authorized devices with expanded bodily presence: lawfare aiming to delegitimize its rival’s place and strengthen China’s personal, alongside intensified drills and patrols to sign resolve and enhance deterrence tailor-made to every theater.
On the Japan entrance, Beijing coupled the workout routines at Okinotori — a part of a decade of rising Sino-Russian joint army actions close to Japan — with the Article 121 check, the authorized spine of a ruling it rejects. On the Philippine entrance, China paired a contemporary wave of joint military-coast guard drills with new nature-reserve administration guidelines at Scarborough Shoal. And east of Taiwan, Beijing launched coast guard patrols on prime of its now-routine army strain across the island, utilizing the One China precept to justify performing on Taipei’s behalf.
To Be Constant, or To not Be Constant?
Okinotori won’t spark a conflict. However it’s the newest manifestation of the area’s ongoing contest over maritime order, during which Japan, China, and america are every caught between authorized consistency and strategic pursuits in their very own strategy towards the regulation of the ocean and the 2016 arbitration ruling, and Taiwan between strategic alignment and its personal claims. Okinotori can be a node in what seems to be an rising sample that Beijing has adopted in dealing with the multifront predicament that its strategists lengthy warned about.
For Japan, the tensions run deep. Tokyo has been among the many arbitration ruling’s strongest proponents, persistently urgent its “ultimate and legally binding” pressure on Beijing. Nevertheless, the identical logic, utilized constantly, profoundly undermines Japan’s personal declare that Okinotori is an island producing an unique financial zone and continental shelf. Thus, Tokyo can’t press the award more durable with out lending weight to the very check that fails its Okinotori declare.
For China, the mirror-image dilemma is that the ruling it has vehemently rejected is exactly what most successfully undermines Japan’s Okinotori declare. Beijing can’t invoke it to rebut Tokyo with out acknowledging the legitimacy of a choice it has spent a decade denouncing. Subsequently, Beijing maintains a tenuous place with a evident legitimacy hole: opposing Japan’s declare to expansive zones round a tiny characteristic on the premise of the regulation of the ocean, whereas claiming precisely such zones from small options of its personal within the South China Sea. The authorized awkwardness is compounded by a strategic quagmire: as China braces itself for the rising multifront predicament it has lengthy frightened about, its coercive response — in each the authorized and army dimensions — on every entrance has to this point solely given Tokyo, Manila, and Taipei new crucial to tighten their alignment.
For Taiwan, the dilemma is a strategic trade-off slightly than authorized inconsistency. Taipei shares Tokyo’s and Manila’s crucial to counter Chinese language strain, however the worth of alignment could also be acquiescing to a Japanese unique financial zone round Okinotori and to a Japan-Philippines delimitation, reached with out Taipei on the desk, in waters it claims — in change for partnerships it badly wants.
The Lai authorities insists it could actually leverage Taiwan’s fisheries agreements with Japan and the Philippines to guard Taiwanese fishing rights, however how it will accomplish that with no say in a settlement overlapping its personal maritime zone is unclear, and whether or not Taipei may defend such a trade-off domestically is equally uncertain. In the meantime, Beijing’s readiness to “converse for” Taiwan turns Taipei’s silence and inaction right into a contemporary pretext for a sustained Chinese language coast guard presence in waters east of the island — maybe establishing a brand new regular that might hole out Taiwan’s fisheries agreements even when Tokyo and Manila are prepared to accommodate Taipei’s pursuits.
For america, Okinotori embodies a trade-off between authorized consistency and alliance worth. Washington has lengthy resisted China’s expansive maritime claims from tiny South China Sea options — a place that serves U.S. navigational pursuits — and pressed the 2016 award on Beijing. However it has stayed conspicuously silent on Okinotori, whose entitlement rests on the identical reasoning. A constant software of the authorized logic would require america to deal with Okinotori as a rock and push Japan to do the identical. Some might defend U.S. selectivity as a deliberate strategic alternative: Washington tolerates Japan’s weak Okinotori declare as a result of the alliance is price greater than authorized consistency, and ambiguity preserves flexibility and alliance solidarity that consistency may undermine. Furthermore, authorized consistency may even pressure america to rethink its personal claims to expansive zones round distant uninhabited islets corresponding to Howland and Baker Islands.
Deliberate ambiguity, nevertheless, can play into Beijing’s hand, to not Washington’s or its allies’, as illustrated within the July Sino-Russian army workout routines. China carried out drills inside Japan’s claimed unique financial zone whereas dressing its operations with legality, and Japan couldn’t even mount a authorized problem with out exposing its personal weak declare. Extra broadly, each episode of U.S. selective silence might lend additional credence to Beijing’s narrative that the rules-based order that Washington (and Tokyo) upholds means guidelines for others, not for america or its associates.
Nor would consistency value what its skeptics fear about. It doesn’t essentially require america to brazenly declare Okinotori as a rock. Slightly, Washington may take the place that the arbitration ruling’s interpretation of Article 121 is universally relevant — to options claimed by buddy and foe alike — whereas taking no place on any particular characteristic. This strategy is logically akin to the neutrality that america has lengthy maintained on sovereignty disputes between Japan and its East Asian neighbors. Washington may quietly push Tokyo to maintain its declare politically and operationally dormant, protesting Chinese language army actions on security grounds with out calling them illegal — an strategy Japan’s response to the July drills already follows.
The price of consistency is manageable friction with an ally, for whom Okinotori carries symbolic worth and $600 million in sunk funding. The profit is denying Beijing its favourite rhetorical line: casting the alliance’s invocation of the regulation of the ocean as selective and self-serving to justify China’s personal double normal between Okinotori and the South China Sea. By insisting on consistency, Washington would even be successfully competing for the opinion of third-party audiences in Asia and past who will more and more form the maritime order — and who’ve been watching to see whether or not the principles bind everybody, or solely the opposite facet.
Shuxian Luo is an assistant professor on the College of Hawai’i and writer of Simmering Seas: Escalation and De-escalation in China’s Maritime Disputes (Oxford, forthcoming in October 2026). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Texas Nationwide Safety Evaluate, Asian Safety, The Pacific Evaluate, Journal of Modern China, Modern Southeast Asia, Overseas Affairs, Army Evaluate, and The Diplomat, amongst others.
