Tokyo rebuts China's assertion remote Japan island in Pacific is a rock

TOKYO - Japan's top government spokesman on Wednesday rejected China's claim that a small remote Japanese island in the Pacific is a rock, saying its status as an island and Tokyo's control over it have been "already established."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, calling China's assertion "unfounded," told a press conference that Okinotori Island is "an island defined under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and has an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf."