In a move to affirm its sovereignty over the disputed Diaoyu Islands, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), China, released geographic coordinates of the Island and some of its affiliated islets. The SOA announced details about the exact longitude and latitude of the Diaoyu Island and 70 of its affiliated islets. It published location maps, three-dimension effect graphs and sketch maps for the Diaoyu Islands.
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Rashid's Blog: Portal for Inquisitive Learners 
None of this is about the islands themselves. These hunks of rocks are of little value beyond scenery (I won’t ask the plants on the island what they think, or for that matter any animal life). What it is all about is control of the seabed and the potential mineral wealth on and beneath it. We’ve been fudging around with international boundaries for a long time in every part of the world as nations try to grab their “fair” share of offshore resources. We would hope there is an international dispute mechanism to sort out the mess that we are creating as we extend out our extraterritorial boundaries to 100s of kilometers from shore. And I would hope that Japan, the Philippines, the two Chinas, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia can sort out boundaries to which they can all agree. Maybe someone should suggest a pooling of the resources to be shared out on the basis of a formula. The country making the greatest investment gets the largest rate of return of the pooled revenue earned from resource development. Wouldn’t it be nice to see national interests subsumed to cooperative joint ventures.
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