Could The Next Asian Military Flashpoint Be This China-Japan Island Dispute?

Brad Lendon, CNN: Why this Japan-China island dispute could be Asia's next military flashpoint

Hong Kong (CNN)While China is engaged in a tense border standoff with India high in the Himalayas, a small group of islands thousands of miles away could be another military tinderbox waiting to explode.

Both Tokyo and Beijing claim the uninhabited islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China, as their own, but Japan has administered them since 1972.

Tensions over the rocky chain, 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, have simmered for years, and with claims over them dating back hundreds of years, neither Japan nor China is likely to back down over territory considered a national birthright in both capitals.

In that respect, the islands are not unlike the rocky heights of the Himalayas, where decades of tension on an ill-defined border between the territories of China and India erupted Monday night, precipitating a clash that cost the lives of at least 20 Indian troops.

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WNU Editor: My first post on this dispute was in 2012, and it was serious then .... The Japan-China Territorial Dispute Is Getting Serious (July 18, 2012).