By Shannon Tiezzi
China and Japan take to cyberspace to promote their territorial claims.
Despite ongoing efforts to alleviate tensions between China and Japan, the territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is not going away anytime soon. In fact, China recently rolled out a website detailing China’s claim to the islands, complete with historical documents and legal arguments. “Diaoyu Island – China’s Inherent Territory,” a banner at the top of the page proclaims. The site not only contains China’s case for sovereignty, but includes photographs, geographical details, and the Chinese names of each of the islands in question.
The new website includes a statement of China’s “basic position” on the Diaoyu Islands. As the website is currently only available in Chinese, I offer a translation below:
- Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands are an inseparable part of China’s territory. Whether viewed from an historical or a legal perspective, Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands are all China’s inherent territory, and China has indisputable sovereignty over them.
- Before Japan’s so-called “discovery” of Diaoyu Island, China already had administered Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands for a period of several hundred years. In 1895, Japan took advantage of the First Sino-Japanese War to secretly “include” Diaoyu Island in its territory. Japan asserted its sovereignty by declaring Diaoyu Island “terra nullius” [land belonging to no one] prior to Japan’s “initial occupation.” This act by Japan severely violated relevant international laws on the acquisition of territory. It is an illegal act of invasion and occupation of Chinese territory, invalid under international law.
- Under the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands were ceded to Japan along with Taiwan and its affiliated islands. After World War II, according to legal documents of the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands were returned to China. After 1952, the United States unilaterally expanded the [geographical] scope of its “trusteeship,” illegally including China’s Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands. In 1972, the U.S. “returned” to Japan “administrative control” over Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands. This U.S. and Japanese act of privately giving and taking Chinese territory does not have any validity under international law, and China resolutely opposed it.
- No matter what unilateral measures Japan uses on the Diaoyu Islands, it cannot change the fact that Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands belong to China. The Chinese government’s determination and will to protect the country’s territorial sovereignty is unswerving; China’s determination to defend the fruits of victory in the global war against fascism is unmoving. We have the confidence and the ability to thwart Japan’s moves to trample on historical fact and international legal principles, and to protect regional peace and order.
Read the full story at The Diplomat