Senkaku Islands Totally Explained

Everything about Senkaku Islands totally explained

The Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyutai Islands are a group of disputed, uninhabited islands currently controlled by Japan, but also claimed by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). The islands are located roughly northeast of Taiwan, due west of Okinawa, and due north of the end of the Ryukyu Islands in the East China Sea.
Their status has emerged as a major issue in foreign relations between China and Japan. Relations between the PRC and the ROC have also complicated the situation.

Naming

"Diaoyu Islands"

The first recorded naming of the islands dated back to the Ming Dynasty of China(14th-17th century) in such books as Journey to Ryu Kyu. The Chinese Imperial Map of the Ming Dynasty also used Diaoyudao Islands.
The Chinese name for the island group (Diaoyu) and the Japanese name for the main island (Uotsuri) both literally mean "Angling".

"Pinnacle Islands"

In the 19th century, the Pinnacle Islands or Pinnacle Group was an English-language name used for the rocks adjacent to, but not including, the largest island Uotsuri Jima/Diaoyu Dao (then called Hoa-pin-su). Neither Kuba Jima/Huangwei Yu (then called Ti-a-usu) nor Taishō Jima/Chiwei Yu (then called "Raleigh Rock") were part of the Pinnacle Islands either.
However, in recent years the name "Pinnacle Islands" has come to be used to refer to the entire island group, as an English-language equivalent to "Diaoyu" or "Senkaku".

"Senkaku Islands"

In the late 19th century, and were translations used for these "Pinnacle Islands" by various Japanese sources. Subsequently, the entire island group (including Uotsuri Jima/Diaoyu Dao and all the others) came to be called Senkaku Rettō, which later evolved into Senkaku Shotō.

Geography

Total islands area:
Population: 0
Geographic coordinates: 25°58' - 25°41'45" N, 123°27'45" - 124°41'30" E around

The islands group

The islands sit on the edge of the continental shelf of mainland Asia, and are separated from the Ryukyu Islands by a sea trench. Japan argues that these islets are part of the Ryukyu Islands. They are north of Ishigaki Island, Japan; northeast of Keelung, Taiwan; and west of Okinawa Island.
The group is made up of five small non-volcanic islands:

Uotsuri Jima/Diaoyu Dao

Uotsuri Jima (魚釣島) or Diaoyu Dao (釣魚島本島 "Angling Island" or 主島) is the largest island of the Senkaku Islands. The Island located at has an area of 4,3 km² (1,7 sq mi) and a highest elevation of 383m (1,256 ft). (External Link

) Uotsuri jima has a number of endemic species such as the Senkaku mole ( Nesoscaptor uchidai) and Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari ant, but these have become threatened by domestic goats that were introduced to the island in 1978 and whose population has increased to over 300 since that time.

Kuba Jima/Huangwei Yu

Kuba Jima (久場島) or Huangwei Yu (黃尾嶼 "Yellow Tail") is located at has an area of and a highest elevation of . (External Link

)

Taishō Jima/Chiwei Yu

Taishō Jima (大正島) or Chiwei Yu (赤尾嶼 "Red Tail") (also "Chi Yu", "Chikan Yu", "Chiwei Shan", "Chiwei Dao", "Chiwei Jiao") is located at has an area of and a highest elevation of . (External Link

) Both the People's Republic of China and Republic of China claim it as their easternmost island. ť The US Navy used Kuba Jima/Huangwei Yu and Taisho Jima/Chiwei Yu as maneuver areas after World War II.

Kita Kojima/Bei Xiaodao

Kita Kojima or Bei Xiaodao (北小島 "Northern Islet") is located at and has an area of 0.31 km² (77 acres) and a highest elevation of 125 m (410 ft). (External Link

)

Minami Kojima/Nan Xiaodao

Minami Kojima or Nan Xiaodao (南小島 "Southern Islet") is located at and has an area of 0.40 km² (100 acres) and a highest elevation of 139 m (456 ft).
Minami Kojima is one of the few breeding places of the rare Short-tailed Albatross.

Other islands

There are also three larger rocks:

or Da Bei Xiaodao (大北小島 "Great northern small island") (External Link

)

or Da Nan Xiaodao (大南小島 "Great southern small island")(External Link

)

or Feilai Dao (飛瀬島 "Flying Shoal"), highest elevation 2m (6½ ft) (External Link

)

Territorial dispute

The islands are currently administered by Japan as a part of Ishigaki City, Okinawa prefecture. According to both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), the islands are part of Taiwan Province (Daxi Village (大溪里), Toucheng Township, Yilan County).

Beginning of the dispute

When the US was to hand over the disputed islands to Japan, the PRC and ROC governments protested and reiterated their sovereignty over the islands. The ROC made the official announcement on June 11, 1971, followed by the PRC on December 30. Despite the Chinese protest, the United States handed over the disputed islands to Japan in 1972.

Chinese claims

Ming Dynasty claim

China claims that the islands were within the Ming Dynasty's sea-defense area and are a part of Taiwan. According to the Chinese, China's sovereignty over the islands is dated to early 15^th century, during the reign of the Ming Dynasty. The name Diaoyutai first appeared in 1403 in the Chinese book Voyage with the Tail Wind, which recorded the names of the islands that voyagers had passed on a trip from Fujian to the Ryukyu Kingdom. By 1534, all the major islets of the island group had been identified and named in the book Record of the Imperial Envoy to Ryukyu.

Unequal Treaties

After losing the First Sino-Japanese War, Qing China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki on 17 April, 1895. This Unequal Treaty ceded Taiwan and its surrounding islands to Japan, although without explicitly mentioning the islands in dispute today. The formal position of China is that all the Unequal Treaties are null and void and thus the islands are still part of Taiwan Province of China.

Tokyo court ruling

China also asserted that in 1944, the Tokyo court ruled that the islands were part of Taihoku Prefecture (Taipei Prefecture), following a dispute between Okinawa Prefecture and Taihoku Prefecture. However, the assertion was solely based on a "claim" by the president of the fishermen's association of Keelung city in 4 August, 1971. The primary source of this paragraph can be found in the journal "Modern China Studies", Issue 1, 1997 (in Simplified Chinese). (External Link

Japanese claims

Formal incorporation

Japan claims that after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government conducted surveys of the islands beginning in 1885 confirming no evidence that the uninhabited islands had been under Chinese control, though this conflicts with the earlier Chinese claim of the islands during the Qing Dynasty. At the time of this survey, Japan didn't formally declare a claim to the islands. Instead, it waited until January 14, 1895, during the middle of the First Sino-Japanese War, to do this. Just three months prior to its military victory in the war and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan erected a marker on the islands to formally incorporate them as its territory. This decision wasn't made public until 1950, however. (External Link

) Four of the islands were subsequently borrowed and developed by the Koga family with the permission of the Japanese government.

History of Ming

Japanese scholars claim that neither China nor Ryukyu had recognized sovereignty over the uninhabited islands. Therefore, they claim that Chinese documents only prove that Kumejima, the first inhabited island reached by the Chinese, belonged to Okinawa. Kentaro Serita (芹田健太郎) of Kobe University points out that the official history book of the Ming Dynasty compiled during the Qing Dynasty, called the History of Ming (明史), describes Taiwan in the "Stories of Foreign Countries" (外国列传). Thus, China didn't control the Senkaku Islands or Taiwan during the Ming Dynasty. (External Link

) However, supporters of China claim the Qing Dynasty gained control of Taiwan and its surrounding islands in 1683, which was 39 years after the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

A Letter from a Chinese Diplomat

In a letter sent to Japanese fishermen, who rescued a number of shipwrecked Chinese in 1920, a Chinese Consul in Nagasaki, representing the Beiyang Government (the internationally recognised government of China at the time), referred to the islands as "Senkaku Islands, Yaeyama District, Okinawa Prefecture, the Empire of Japan". However, both Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China currently argue that it was only because Taiwan (include its surrounding islands) was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese War and the Shimonoseki Treaty which concluded it (1895), and that it's now an inalienable part of China. The One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue

United States occupation

Japan claims that after World War II, the islands came under the United States occupation of Okinawa. During this period, the United States and the Ryūkyū Government administered the islands and the US Navy even used Kuba-jima and Taisho-jima as maneuver areas. In 1972, sovereignty over Okinawa, and arguably the surrounding islands, was handed back to Japan as part of the termination of United States Military Government jurisdiction over the Article 3 territories of the Treaty of San Francisco.
Supporters of ROC reject Japan's claim, stating that the ROC government maintains sovereignty over the islands. They assert that when US forces were stationed on Taiwan during the Cold War, military maneuvers were periodically held which required the use of the islands as an aerial bombing target, and the US military applied each time to the ROC government, instead of to Japanese authorities, for authorization.
Supporters of ROC also argue that the 1954 ROC-US Mutual Defense Treaty contains wording implying that the ROC controlled the islands. The ROC government and the US later agreed to have US forces patrol the area several miles north of the island of Taiwan. Thus, the ROC had agreed to have US forces patrol the area around the islands.

Recent developments

1978: The Japan Youth Association set up a lighthouse on the main island.

July 14, 1996: The Japan Youth Association builds a 5 m high, solar-powered, aluminum lighthouse on another island.

September 14, 1996: a US State Department spokesman referred to the US's neutral position on the Senkaku Islands issue.

September 26, 1996: David Chan (陳毓祥), a Hong Kong protester, drowns near the islets, after leaping off one of the protest vessels with several companions with the object of symbolizing Chinese claim of sovereignty.

October 7, 1996: Protesters plant the flags of the ROC and the PRC on the main island, but are later removed by Japanese authorities.

April 09, 1999: US Ambassador to Japan Thomas S. Foley said "we are not, as far as I understand, taking a specific position in the dispute.... we don't assume that there will be any reason to engage the security treaty in any immediate sense."

April 2002: The Japanese government leased Uotsuri and other islands from the purported private owners.

March 24, 2004: A group of Chinese activists from the PRC planned to stay on the Islands for three days. The seven people who landed on the islands were arrested by Japanese authorities for illegal entry. The Japanese Foreign Ministry forwarded a complaint to the PRC government, but the PRC in turn demanded the release of the activists. They were then sent to Japan and deported from there. Japan subsequently stated that it would prohibit anybody from landing on the islands without prior permission.

March 24, 2004: Adam Ereli, Deputy Spokesman at the US State Department said "The U.S. doesn't take a position on the question of the ultimate sovereignty of the Senkaku Diaoyu Islands."

February 2005: Japan planned to take ownership of a privately-owned lighthouse on Uotsuri, after it was offered to them by the owner, a fisherman living on Ishigaki, Okinawa. The lighthouse is expected to be managed by the Japanese Coast Guard.

February 10, 2005: On Voice of America, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said that Japan's new assertiveness is in line with the desires of many Japanese politicians to take their country beyond its post-World War Two reliance on the United States. "It's a question of the evolution of Japanese thinking on its own. Japan has made it clear they want to resolve all of the territorial disputes by diplomatic means and that's certainly something that we agree with. Our kind of getting in the middle of it's probably not the most productive way to proceed."

June 2005: The ROC dispatched a ROCN frigate into disputed waters (but didn't go as far as the islands) after Taiwanese fishing vessels were harassed by Japanese patrol boats. The frigate, which was carrying Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng and ROC Defense Minister Lee Jye, wasn't challenged and returned to Taiwan without incident. Fisheries talks between Taipei and Tokyo were held in July, but didn't cover sovereignty issues.

March 17, 2006: Kyodo News reported the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Thomas Schieffer, presented that he considered "the Islands as territory of Japan" in his talk in Tokyo.

October 27, 2006: A group of activists from Hong Kong, the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands, including Tsang Kin Shing and several members of the April Fifth Action, approached the islands in order to show the support for Chinese claims to the Senkakus. They were stopped from landing on the islands by the Japan Coast Guard. Later on, the PLAN conducted a military exercise in the area.Further Information

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