Flash point?

As if there were not enough things to fret about, it's reported that Chinese warships are nosing around a Japanese natural gas field in the East China Sea.

Five Chinese naval ships, including a guided-missile destroyer, were spotted on Sept. 9 near the Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea — the site of a fierce Sino-Japan territorial dispute, Tokyo military officials said.

A Japanese P-3C patrol plane monitored the five Chinese vessels — including a 7,940-ton Sovremenny-class missile destroyer, two 1,702-ton Jianghu I-class missile frigates, a 23,000-ton replenishment vessel and a 6,000-ton missile observation support ship — as they cruised near the gas field, according to the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

The ships were in the open sea about 290 kilometers northeast of Kume Island near Japan's southern island of Okinawa. It was the first time Japan has spotted Chinese warships near the disputed gas field, the MSDF said. The ships did not violate Japanese territorial waters and Japan's military took no action, officials said.

Of course bad relations go back even farther than World War II, but from looking at the map it's easy to see why two energy-hungry countries might hanker for the same patch of ocean, if there's lots of natural gas under it.

Odd how history turns. Sixty, seventy years ago we would've been rooting for the Chinese.

Note that any confrontations in the East China Sea could effectively screen off a military action by the Chinese againt Taiwan, if the cards were played properly. Or in other words, if the U.S. Navy were called in to help the Japanese defend their gas fields in a conventional action, meanwhile the Chinese "reinforce their lines" with a little maneuver against the "runaway" province we used to call Nationalist China.

The Chinese have built a drilling platform east of where the Japanese claim a borderline. East is not the right direction, obviously.

China has built a drilling platform east of the line that Japan regards as its sea boundary. Tokyo has demanded that Beijing stop development for fear that potentially rich reserves on the Japanese side might be sucked dry. In July, Japan granted drilling rights for the gas field to the Teikoku Oil Co.

The conflict over control of the sea and its possible energy resources — particularly the undersea gas deposits in the East China Sea that lies between China's eastern coast and Japan's southern island chain of Okinawa — has added to strains in Beijing-Tokyo relations, which have sunk to their lowest level in years.

Japan imports all of its oil, and because much of it passes through the seas surrounding Taiwan, feels its survival depends on keeping those seas stable. Mainland China's control over Taiwan could hurt Japan's access to oil, Tokyo officials fear.

And of course the United Nations is completely useless for settling this sort of thing before the you-know-what hits the fan.