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The Intractability of the Sino-Japanese Senkaku/Diaoyu Territorial Dispute: Historical Memory, People's Diplomacy and Transnational Activism, 1961-1978
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
How has ownership of the tiny and uninhabited Senkaku/Diaoyu islands become the most intractable issue in Sino-Japanese relations? Explanations have typically focused on legal and diplomatic issues, the context of the Cold War and the San Francisco Treaty system, and the economic and strategic values of the maritime region. This paper instead argues that people's diplomacy by both Chinese and Japanese turned the ownership issue into a “homeland dispute,” by confirming the status of these remote and uninhabited islets as “inherent territory” of their nations, thus making it nigh impossible for their governments to make compromises and concessions. From 1970 to 1972, political mobilization and street action by Chinese activists in North America, Taiwan and Hong Kong compelled the governments of both Taiwan and Mainland China to assert Chinese sovereignty over the islands openly and to maintain those claims consistently over time. Initially in Japan, some groups and individuals supported Chinese ownership. However, statesociety collaboration produced a consensus for Japanese ownership of the islands. Although an unwritten shelving agreement between the PRC and Japan kept tensions under wraps from 1978 to 2010, occasional flareups, initiated or aggravated by a combination of right-wing Japanese groups and Chinese activists from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the PRC, prevented any resolution of the dispute. The shelving agreement collapsed in the aftermath of the 2010 trawler collision incident, leading to a semi-permanent state of tensions between China and Japan.
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- Copyright © The Authors 2017