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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The Pinnacle Islands

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The sweep of history misses the occasional fur-ball like the seven square kilometres of islands central to the current Sino-Japanese naval confrontation over fishery and resource claims by Japan and both Chinas.

There have been a number of activist flag raisings and Coast Guard cutter scrapes among the three claimants to these isolated, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.  It’s a puzzle and there are American fingerprints on whatever ambiguity underlies the dispute, unfortunately, considering the Potsdam Declaration, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender and the United States post-war civil administration of the Ryukyu Islands.

The US is basically committed to backing Japan’s claim, having tacitly handed them as “Ryuku islands” back to Japanese control in 1972.  But the Chinese claim also arises through US international agreements.  The Potsdam Declaration while not a treaty was co-authored by Chiang Kai-shek and stated, “Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine.”  This leads us for further clarification to the Cairo Communique of December, 1943:


It is [the Three Great Allies’] purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.

Cairo Communique National Diet Library

The Potsdam Declaration, but not the earlier Cairo Communique, is clearly cited in the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.  China, who claims them historically, theoretically ceded them along with the Pescadores and Taiwan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki after defeat in the First Sino-Japanese war of 1895.

So you pick.  If you wondered recently why China started building an aircraft carrier these maritime and territorial contests with her coastal and island neighbours are probably your answer; imperial China was comprehensively mugged by various naval and colonial powers in the course of her decline.  

Sooner or later the People’s Navy is not going to show up with a flotilla of fisheries enforcement vessels; probably around the time a populist nationalism starts to preoccupy their middle class.  Japan also is showing symptoms of nationalist activism and one of the government’s justifications for buying the remaining privately-owned islands and provoking this “incident” is to keep them out of the busy hands of their nationalistic political opponents for everybody’s sake.

Curiously, the People’s Republic of China supports the claim of the Republic of China in their de facto role as the provincial authority of Taiwan, then claims national sovereignty over them in turn; to be true to their Reagan-era policies one supposes the Right should be supporting Taiwan’s claim against all comers.


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16 comments

  1. spacemanspiff

    I really enjoy reading your thoughts on almost everything.

    So this post got me thinking (I’m sure you can smell it in Oz) about how long, short periods are. For example, we nuked Japan less than a century ago and we’re friends now. Wow. Isn’t that sort of a mini mind fuck right there?  

  2. Shaun Appleby

    Worth clicking through to read the whole thing if one wants to get a taste of what a populist, aggressive China might be like and how imminent:


    In Beijing, a cordon of paramilitary anti-riot police prevented the mob from reaching the embassy, but did not intervene as the protesters chanted slogans and hurled objects.

    “Return our islands! Japanese devils get out!” some shouted. One held up a sign reading: “For the respect of the motherland, we must go to war with Japan.”

    Malcolm Moore – Anti-Japan protests erupt in dozens of Chinese cities in disputed islands row Telegraph 15 Sep 12

    Given their historical enmity and past grievances this could be an increasingly convenient issue to inflame for political factions in both countries.

  3. Shaun Appleby

    Assuming the US would back Japan’s claim.  The 1971 Japan-US Ryukyu Islands Reversion Agreement left sovereignty unresolved:


    During Senate ratification of the Reversion Agreement, the United States specified that the agreement did not affect the determination of sovereignty over disputed islands. The US Department of State continues to take no position on the sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.

    Daniel Dzurek – The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute IBRU Durham University 18 Oct 96

    The Obama administration is rather hoping the whole thing will just go away, as it has in the past:


    “I’m pretty frank with people: I don’t think that we’d allow the U.S. to get dragged into a conflict over fish, or over a rock,” said a senior U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations within the Obama administration.

    Craig Whitlock – Panetta to urge China and Japan to tone down dispute over islands Washington Post 16 Sep 12

    Given the rabble rousing by China’s state-run media which has resulted in six days of protests and some violence, however, I see a twofold parallel with Germany’s populist naval movement at the beginning of the last century; it conjures an external nationalistic threat that distracts an otherwise restive population and increases willingness to accept increased burdens of taxation.  If the Chinese start a Naval League and contribute to naval vessel construction by public subscription the analogy would be even more apt.

  4. fogiv

    “I am concerned that when these countries engage in provocations of one kind or another over these various islands, that it raises the possibility that a misjudgment on one side or the other could result in violence, and could result in conflict,” Mr Panetta said, when asked about a clash between Japan and China.

    “And that conflict would then have the potential of expanding.”

    http://www.theaustralian.com.a…

  5. fogiv

    TOKYO, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) — Two Chinese surveillance vessels entered waters near the “Senkaku Islands” (Diaoyu Island and affiliated islets) early Monday morning, the Japan Coast Guard said.

    The Japanese government has set up a countermeasures team at the prime minister’s office following the arrival of the Haijian 66 and Haijian 46.

    http://news.xinhuanet.com/engl…

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