China and Japan seek to ease gas dispute

China and Japan began talks today on a dispute over gas deposits in the East China Sea amid increasingly strained relations.

Kenichiro Sasae, head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asia-Oceania Bureau, was scheduled to have two meetings with Cui Tiankai, director of China’s Foreign Ministry’s Asian Affairs Department, said a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy.

The Japanese side is eager for some response on the East China Sea issue following a lengthy suspension in talks, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol.

Nobuyori Kodaira, head of Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, also attended the discussions, he said.

China and Japan have been trying to hammer out a territorial dispute over oil and gas deposits near Okinawa in the East China Sea, which falls inside both countries’ exclusive economic zones.

China has already extracted gas from one field, triggering protests from Japan, which fears the reserves might run dry. Tokyo wants Beijing to stop drilling and has proposed a joint project to explore the reserves.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal nations can claim an economic zone extending 200 nautical miles from their shores.

Both Japan and China signed the treaty, but their claims overlap the disputed area and the United Nations has until May 2009 to rule on the matter.

Meanwhile, China has revised its 2004 economic growth rate to 10.1% from 9.5% following the recent completion of an economic census, the National Statistics Bureau reported today.

China’s gross domestic product grew a feverish 9.8% for all of 2005, the official Xinhua News Agency reported earlier, citing the National Development and Reform Commission. That estimate, issued just after the New Year, likely will be revised when official data are released months later.

China had reported in late December that based on the census, the size of the entire economy was about 20% bigger than previously thought because it had underestimated the services sector.

Since then, the government has gradually released figures for various years.

The figures show the economy growing even faster than expected, resisting government efforts to curb growth that has strained energy supplies and transport systems, while generating massive pollution problems.