China's recent conduct in its bitter dispute with Japan over the ownership of islands, fisheries and seabed resources in the East China Sea raises some geopolitical storm warnings for Southeast Asia.
While often seen as separate issues, the conflicting sovereignty claims of China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea are closely connected with Beijing's much larger territorial and maritime boundary claims in the South China Sea.
The Chinese claims in Southeast Asia's maritime heart overlap with those of atoll and reef ownership by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, and with Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf resource claims by those four countries and Indonesia.