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October 10, 2012 at 05:39 AM
Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were a few short as they got under way this week in Japan. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), wasn’t there, nor were China’s four largest state-owned banks. The reason? A territorial dispute over a group of small uninhabited islets claimed by both Japan and China that has been escalating over the past few months.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the meetings, scheduled to run through Sunday in Tokyo, were expected to draw around 10,000 participants, and Zhou was scheduled as a speaker at events held by the IMF and the Institute of International Finance (IIF). However, PBOC is instead being represented by Yi Gang, a PBOC deputy governor, and Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao.
Ownership of the islands, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, has been in dispute since 1885, but recent events escalated tensions when, as previously reported by AdvisorOne, Japan announced its intention to purchase them from a private Japanese owner.
As both sides sent everything from fishing vessels to warships to the islands to display their ownership, the atmosphere grew heated. Demonstrations and vandalism in China shuttered factories, car dealerships and restaurants, and Fitch Ratings warned that continued hostilities could lead to a downgrade for companies involved in the closures.
The $340 billion trade relationship between the two Asian countries has been put in jeopardy as China continues to flex its muscles over the islands, and now the dispute has spread to international meetings of the IMF.
