State-owned land sale to Chinese consulate put off amid tension+

NAGOYA, Dec. 19 Kyodo -
A local bureau of the Ministry of Finance has put on hold a sale of state-owned
land in central Nagoya to a Chinese Consulate General amid local protests over
China's claim to sovereignty over Japanese-controlled islands, bureau sources
said Sunday.
The Tokai Local Finance Bureau posted the notice of sale for the 31,000
square-meter area located next to Nagoya Castle for three months from April 15,
to which the consulate and Aichi Gakuin University applied, seeking
respectively to obtain 10,000 square meters and 21,000 square meters, according
to the sources.
The bureau was planning to finish reviewing the sale plan by September and sign
a deal with the parties within this fiscal year ending March, but matters
became complicated after a Chinese fishing boat collided with Japan Coast Guard
patrol vessels near the Senkaku Islands in September.
As bilateral ties between China and Japan soured after China insisted on its
sovereignty over the islands in the East China Sea, opposition grew among local
residents and the bureau began to receive dozens of protest emails and calls
every day, they said.
''China clearly showed us a hard-line stance in the collision incident and we
cannot accept sales of Japanese-owned land when we are already having a
territorial dispute,'' said Reiko Hayashi, 63, a company employee in Nagoya who
has collected 10,000 petitions against the sale of the land and submitted them
to the bureau.
The bureau has subsequently told the university to indefinitely suspend the
plan, saying it ''would like to see how things go.'' The plan has effectively
been frozen, the sources said.
While noting that the bureau cannot reject the plan as it sees no problem, its
officials said they will have to deal with the matter carefully after receiving
such ''unexpectedly serious'' protests from residents. They are now uncertain
whether the land can actually be sold, they added.
The Chinese consulate has said it has no comment on the matter.
In a similar development, the city of Niigata has also suspended the sale of
city-owned land to another Chinese consulate due to local opposition following
the maritime collisions off the uninhabited islands, called the Diaoyu Islands
in China.
==Kyodo