ABSTRACT
The prospect of availability of large oil deposits moved China to declare the priority of its claims. In order to quell its growing demand for oil and gas, and to diversify away from its high dependence on supplies from West Asia, China started in the 1970s with prospecting and extraction of energy resources in the East China Sea. Pure economic and logistical reasons make the oil and gas reserves in the East China Sea more useful for China than for Japan. China is developing many oil/gas fields just to the west of what Japan claims is the median line separating the two countries' Exclusive Economic Zones. While politics has remained cold, to the extent of being frozen time and again, it is the economics that has somewhat salvaged a complete breakdown and fostered de-escalation of the Sino-Japanese conflict over territorial and maritime rights. The post-war Sino-Japanese relationship is characterised by economic interdependence being confronted by political wariness and bitter contention.
