Earlier this week, I had read that 14 Chinese activists
were arrested for placing a Chinese flag on the Senkaku islands. Not fully
understanding what this debate was all about, I decided to do some research.
Known as Senkaku
in Japanese, Diaoyu in Mandarin and Diaoyutai in Cantonese, there is an archipelago
of eight islands being claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan. This archipelago is
currently uninhabited and controlled by Japan and is located in the East China
Sea (northeast of Taiwan and west of Okinawa). These islands are commonly
thought to sit atop oil deposits,
and are surrounded by rich fishing grounds.
The Chinese claim that these islands were discovered during
the Ming Dynasty; the Japanese claim that they discovered them in the late
1800s. Japan annexed the islands
then in 1895 after winning the First Sino-Japanese War. China feels it was
forced to sign the post-war treaty which handed the islands over to the
Japanese.
In 1900, a brief attempt to
make the island functionable by housing a bonito plant quickly failed; the
islands remain vacant.
After World War II, the
Senkaku islands were temporarily controlled by the United States. However,
China does not recognize this Treaty of San Francisco.
In 1972, the Japanese
regained control of the archipelago.
Earlier this year, Tokyo’s
governor, Shintaro Ishihara raised three million with the help of private
investors to purchase three of the islands. This has reignited the dispute.
Time magazine recently
published a report which concluded that Japan needs to “resolve the ownership
dispute over a tiny group of islands or risk an honest-to-goodness shooting war
with China”. A former prime minister of Japan also said that “Where China
sees an unrepentant Japan clinging to a legacy of colonial expansion, Japan
sees an arrogant and erratic China once again bullying its smaller neighbors”.
The idea of war between
China and Japan in this day and age seems unthinkable but the bigger question
is, if it happens, will America get involved?
No comments:
Post a Comment