China vs Japan: What's Really Going on, and What's at Stake, in the Senkakus'

This ad and variants appeared in US newspapers this week. What is going on? It's quite simple: a case of naked expanionist aggression that began in the early 1970s and is starting to crescendo as China's leaders are now trapped in claims they cannot support and no longer wholly control. Come below the fold to for a post-mortem on the past and a pre-mortem on the future.....

 By  VorkosiganVorkosigan



What happened in the Senkakus is really quite simple, despite forty years of attempts to complicate it by the two Chinese governments, the ROC (on Taiwan) and the PRC (in Beijing). In 1895 Japan annexed the Senkakus, which at the time nobody claimed to own. For some seventy years there were no protests from either the ROC (Taiwan) or the PRC (Beijing). However, in 1968 a report by the Committee for the Co-ordination of Joint Prospecting for Mineral Resources in Asian Offshore Areas of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), identified great potential for fossil fuel energy resources under the East China Sea. In 1971, after Okinawa was returned to Japan (the ROC (Taiwan) protested this) both the ROC (Taiwan) and PRC (Beijing) governments laid claim to the Senkakus, which they call the Diaoyutai Islands, the name they've been known as in Chinese for several centuries. Recall that both governments claim to represent "China".
That is the essence of the dispute. Currently both ROC (Taiwan) and PRC (Beijing) argue that the Diaoyutai are part of Taiwan, which, they both argue is part of China (under international law, most powers regard Taiwan's status as undetermined). They buttress their claims based on ancient maps and texts. More on that in a moment, but here are two bleakly salient facts:
1. ...between 1895 and 1970, neither Chinese government ever registered any protest over the Senkaku Islands. On all texts and maps produced by the PRC (Beijing) and ROC (Taiwan) the Senkakus are identified as Japanese and generally, their Japanese names are used. No maps or texts identify the islands' ownership as controversial.
2. ...after 1971, both governments hastily altered their official maps in the best 1984 style to reflect this historically new claim, and then further claimed that the islands had been "Chinese" all along. The idea that "ancient history" supports the Chinese claim to the Senkakus has arisen only since this time.
Let's look at the evidence..... first, the ROC (Taiwan).
ROC (Taiwan)
Although many of us in the Asian blogosphere know about the map alterations (as does the media, which rarely reports on them), I was nevertheless delighted when a longtime reader of my blog alerted me to this recent paper entitled The Diaoyutai Islands on Taiwan’s Official Maps: Pre- and Post-1971 (Asian Affairs: An American Review, 39:90–105, 2012) by Ko-hua Yap, Yu-wen Chen, and Ching-chi Huang. They write by way of introduction:

"This research report is the first to present irrefutable evidence of the ROC government’s change of position from excluding to including the Diaoyutai Islands in the ROC’s territory in the early 1970s. The evidence lies in cartographic information produced by the ROC government before the 1970s, which had always tacitly assumed that the Diaoyutai Islands were part of the Ryukyu Islands, not under the ROC’s sovereign control. Not until 1971 and 1972 did the Taiwanese government modify official maps—such as national atlases, military topographic maps, and maps in national textbooks—labelling the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Taiwan or using the “Taiwanese name” (i.e., Diaoyutai Islands, Tiaoyutai Islets) to identify these islands."

Yap et al examine four cases of how official texts and documents were altered. First, they instance the government-produced Taiwan Statistical Abstract. From 1946 to 1971, they observe, this text identified the northernmost point of Taiwan as Pengjia Islet, one of the three small islands off the northeast coast of Taiwan (example). But on Dec 2, 1971 the government announced that the Senkakus/Diaoyutai belonged to China and were administrated by Yilan county. The 1972 abstract was then duly altered, and Kuba Jima and Taisho Jima in the Senkakus were presented as the northernmost and easternmost points of Taiwan in all subsequent versions of this text. They then move on to the official maps. First they present the National War College atlases of Taiwan and China. They write:

"Evidence of the ROC’s shift of stance on the Diaoyutai Islands is also displayed in the NWC productions. For instance, in the National Atlas of China Vol. 1, the theme of which is Taiwan Province, the Diaoyutai Islands were not included in the first (1959), second (1963), or even third (1967) editions. It was only in 1972, when the fourth edition of the National Atlas of China Vol. 1 was published, that the Diaoyutai Islands were shown as part of Taiwan’s territory."

Here is the relevant map:
...the top map is the 1959, 1963, and 1967 edition. In the 1972 map there is a new inset box, depicting the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Taiwan. Then they, note, something else new appeared on this map:

It is equally interesting to note that, on the copyright page of the revised version, a line states that “the delineation of boundaries on the maps must not be considered authoritative.” This line never appeared in the original edition or in any other volumes of the National Atlas of China or the Grand Atlas of the World.