China has proposed resuming negotiations with Japan on setting their boundary in the East China Sea in an apparent attempt to highlight issues related to their dispute over the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands, sources said Monday.
China is advocating a resumption of bilateral consultations on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, last held in December 2003, before Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's planned visit to China in mid-December.
By calling for a resumption of talks, China appears to be trying to get Japan to acknowledge that a territorial dispute exists over the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets and barren rocks known as the Diaoyu Islands in China.
Japan maintains that no such dispute exists and that it has indisputable sovereignty over the territory, which is under Okinawa jurisdiction. China, however, claims the islets have been Chinese territory since ancient times.