Save the Senkaku from jingoism As jingoists in China and Japan work overtime to ratchet up the two countries" dispute over the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, their governments should make haste to deploy the statecraft needed to defuse tensions. The uninhabited rocks of the Senkaku are administered and controlled by Japan, whose government leases the islands from a private owner. For now, the resource bounty of the archipelago is limited to fish. But sovereign possessions of the slightest current value are made more attractive by creating claims to exclusive economic zones under the law of the sea. With China's rise have come more forceful claims from Beijing over a long string of maritime footholds in surrounding waters, rattling nerves in neighbouring countries. For the Senkaku, a status quo that had worked well is now being disturbed by rabble-rousers on all sides. Chinese fishermen are challenging Japanese control; last year the coastguard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing vessel. In Japan, Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's belligerent governor, has been raising private funds to purchase the islands for commercial development under the Tokyo regional government. The damage that this freelance flag-planting could do to relations with China prompted an unheard of public rebuke from Japan's ambassador in Beijing. The law of the sea is a means of settling territorial disputes - but it relies on sensible behaviour by states in grey areas. In other parts of the world, countries have managed to agree joint resource development without renouncing competing sovereignty claims. Beijing and Tokyo have everything to gain from following such examples - especially as they have already pledged to work together on gas exploitation elsewhere in the East China Sea. That could best have been done by leaving the existing Senkaku arrangement in place. Yoshihiko Noda, Japan's prime minister, has announced a plan for the central government to buy the islands. This change in approach is bound to anger Beijing - though it seems as much designed to foil Mr Ishihara's more provocative intentions. If Mr Noda's scheme secures that the islands remain undeveloped, this may be the most promising means of steering sovereignty issues back into dormancy. But Mr Noda must quickly muster some deft diplomacy so that Beijing can be persuaded to let the issue pass. For this to succeed, all governments with a stake in the island group should recall that the cost of open conflict dwarfs any value to be had from controlling it.