China seeks territory and status with air zone: experts

China's pursuit of national prestige and regional power was behind its declaration of air defence rights over islands administered by Japan, analysts say, and it will defy the resulting international outrage.

Beijing will loudly assert its self-declared rights, but at the same time manage the row and avoid a full-blown conflict, they say.

The waters surrounding the remote, uninhabited outcrops known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku to Japan could be rich in oil, natural gas and other resources.

But Beijing's position over them is fuelled by its decades-old resentment of Tokyo for its brutal invasion of China, part of Japan's imperialist ventures across Asia in the buildup to World War II.

At the same time Beijing increasingly sees itself as a global heavyweight, and when new President Xi Jinping -- whose slogan of a "Chinese Dream" encapsulates a national rise -- met America's Barack Obama in June, he called for a "new model of great power relations".

"The bigger issue actually probably is prestige," said Rana Mitter, an expert on Chinese-Japanese relations at Oxford University. China is "looking to find a wider regional hegemonic role".

It "clearly regards its own territorial claims as having been underplayed and understated in recent decades and is now looking to reverse the situation", he added.

Citing ancient texts, China maintains that the islands have been its territory since "immemorial times" but were seized by Japanese forces in 1895.

They were occupied by the US as part of Okinawa until 1972, when they were returned to Japan, but Tokyo bought some of them from their private owners in September 2012, infuriating Beijing which saw the move as reviving an effectively dormant dispute.

Incursions -- and tensions -- have since soared, with Japan scrambling jets in response to Chinese aircraft 386 times in the year to September, an average of more than once a day.

But in China's view it is Japan that is escalating the situation, and it is merely responding. It also accuses Tokyo of being unwilling to negotiate by refusing to even acknowledge that a dispute exists.

"After nationalisation I think the Chinese basically very adamantly wanted to establish the fact that there is a territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands," said Jingdong Yuan, an expert on China's foreign policy at the University of Sydney.

Beijing's declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) at the weekend was just its latest measure to cast its claims over the territory as "routine, nothing out of the ordinary, China just exercising its sovereignty", said Yuan.

War is 'unimaginable'

Taylor Fravel, an expert on China's territorial disputes at MIT, said the immediate trigger for the ADIZ declaration may have been Japan's threat to shoot down drones after an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle flew towards the islands.

Beijing in turn warned that that would amount to an "act of war", and Fravel said that "China has likely viewed Japan's own ADIZ as expansive... covering Chinese gas fields and at some points quite close to China".

The Chinese zone requires aircraft to provide their flight plan, declare their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication, or face "defensive emergency measures". Beijing insists it is not aimed at any particular country.

Oxford's Mitter said that Beijing's vague warning of "defensive emergency measures" indicated that it did not want to provoke conflict, and was trying "to put forward something that sounds as assertive and robust as possible without actually pushing themselves over the line".

Japan vehemently condemned the declaration as a provocation, as did Washington, which says it stands by Tokyo in line with its security treaty obligations.

Two American B-52 bombers flew over the disputed area this week without informing Beijing -- which said it monitored them in flight but so far has taken no action in response.

Yuan added that both China and Japan "are conscious that they don't want to actually put themselves in a situation where you have a direct conflict".

"Really it would be quite unimaginable that they would be willing to actually get into a military conflict."

Close encounters in the area do raise the risk of an accidental clash, but analysts say both China and Japan have strong incentives to avoid that. The two share significant business ties as the world's second- and third-largest economies.

But Beijing -- which is ramping up its military spending and capabilities -- does believe it deserves greater respect commensurate with its economic rise.

Chinese officials and state media accuse Japan and the US -- which both have ADIZs of their own -- of double standards.

In a commentary Tuesday the official Xinhua news agency said they were "indulging in the trick of calling white black".

It quoted a Chinese saying to describe their stance: "The magistrates are free to burn down houses while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps."

Jia Qingguo, of Peking University, said China was groping its way to great power status.

Beijing's approach to territorial issues and maritime disputes would probably become less shrill, he said, "as China becomes stronger and more like a superpower".