A ROW between Japan and China intensified yesterday as Tokyo took steps towards granting Japanese companies the right to test-drill for oil and gas in a disputed area of the East China Sea.

China protested furiously. “Japan has come up with a provocation to China’s rights and the norm of international relations,” Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said. “China has already made a protest to Japan, and reserves the right to take further reaction,” he added.

Japanese energy companies have waited nearly 40 years for the controversial decision. The move signals Tokyo’s defiance of violent anti-Japanese protests across China last weekend and its determination to defend what it claims are its rights to precious resources.

The decision, initiated by Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, was taken after Beijing ignored an ultimatum last week demanding a stop to Chinese exploration in the disputed area.

The issue will be raised at a meeting between Nobutaka Machimura, the Japanese Foreign Minister, and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, in Beijing on Sunday. Mr Machimura will also repeat calls for China to cease work on the gas fields and to hand over information on its operations.

This week, Tang Jiaxuan, a Chinese state councillor, warned Tokyo against giving Japanese companies test-drilling rights, saying that to do so would “bring about further complications and intensify the East China Sea situation, and would fundamentally change the nature of the issue”.

Defence analysts believe that by giving Japanese companies the right to send in drilling ships, the chances of a clash possibly involving naval patrol boats, are now much higher.

Although the recent deterioration in relations between the two Asian neighbours has been focused on Japan’s perceived lack of remorse for wartime atrocities, analysts believe that the undersea energy battle is the real issue.

China and Japan are, respectively, the world’s second and third-largest consumers of energy and the lack of major resources on their own territories means that both are heavily reliant on imports.

A Japanese official said that the Government decided to start preparations for test-drilling because Japan’s need was now urgent. The area of the East China Sea in question is a potentially rich natural gas and oil field waiting to be tapped and both countries are desperate for a stable, local source of oil and gas.

The dispute centres on a chain of tiny islands whose ownership has itself been the subject of argument. A recent report found that two gas projects recently started by China are just a few thousand yards from a “median line” that Tokyo marks between the two countries’ economic zones.

According to the survey, China is about to tap resources that Tokyo views as Japan’s. Beijing does not recognise the line and claims that its economic waters extend to the edge of the continental shelf, well beyond the zone being drilled.

The uninhabited islands are more than 600 miles from the Japanese mainland and are known as Senkaku to the Japanese, and Diaoyu to the Chinese.

The Japanese Government raised the stakes in the diplomatic tangle when it said recently that it would take control of a lighthouse built in 1978 on Uotsurishima, one of the islands, as part of an activist group’s attempt to demonstrate that it was technically an island rather than a rock.

As an island, Uotsurishima extends Japan’s economic zone by about 180 miles. Seven Chinese activists landed on the island in March 2004 and destroyed part of the lighthouse. Efforts to reach agreement over energy projects in the area have failed.

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