China invites Japan, South Korea to build observatory in disputed Aksai Chin

by sagarmedia on April 17, 2012

BEIJING: China is pushing Japan and South Korea to establish an astronomical observatory in Aksai Chin, a remote part of Jammu & Kashmir that Beijing occupied after the 1962 war and had Islamabad cede parts of the region to it a year later.
A Chinese scientist on Sunday said the East Asia Core Observatories Association — with China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as it members – has recommended the site for the observatory. Yao told the official Xinhua news agency that the association had also surveyed sites in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Pamirs Plateau in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, but the new observatory is likely to be established in Tibet (Aksai Chin) this year.
The association’s website shows one of its proposed sites in Aksai Chin (Shiquanhe in Chinese) in Tibet.
“EACOA directors reached a consensus that a review and evaluation meeting are urgently needed among regional excepts, aiming to update EACOA on relevant site survey progress, particularly focus on the site-testing metrology, instrumentations, procedures and data analysis performed on the candidate site at Ali (Aksai Chin) Tibet,” it said about a recent meeting.
Ali in Tibet’s Ngari Prefecture falls within Aksai Chin, which India claims to be its own territory.
The move comes as Beijing has been asking India to pull out of oil exploration from the disputed areas of the South China Sea off the Vietnamese coast. Both China and Vietnam claim the South China Sea.
China feels that the presence of India and Russia, which recently entered the area, will further complicate the territorial dispute. Experts see the Chinese proposal for the observatory as an attempt to complicate the Aksai Chin dispute by drawing in Japan and South Korea, who are members of the Japan-based EACOA.
The observatory will carry out research on planetary science, star formation, gamma-ray bursts and other astronomical projects. It will conduct around-the-clock observations of certain celestial bodies.
The move, if successful, will legitimize Beijing’s claim over the disputed area and make it difficult for New Delhi to establish its rights over it.