Beijing has irredentist claims on all its borders and over all the waters that wash onto its shores. Indeed, it claims about 80 percent of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys and Paracels, which are on a broad plateau up to 1,600 km from China's eastern coastline. For its part, China insists on a "sacred duty" to recover and reunify what it perceives as "lost" territories.
Besides Taiwan, China claims India's state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls South Tibet, or Zangnan. In 2006, China's ambassador to India declared the "whole state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory ... we are claiming all of that. That is our position."
In a challenge to its most powerful neighbor, Japan, Beijing claims the Senkaku Islands, which it calls the Diaoyu. These consist of eight small, uninhabited volcanic islets in the East China Sea within 120 nautical miles of Taiwan and 200 nm of Okinawa.