Senkaku Islands dispute
Based on Wikipedia: Senkaku Islands dispute
Five tiny islands and three barren rocks—the largest barely four square kilometers—sit in the East China Sea between Japan, China, and Taiwan. Nobody lives there. Nobody has ever really lived there. And yet these specks of land have brought the world's second and third largest economies to the brink of conflict, prompted the United States to publicly affirm it would go to war over them, and caused China to scramble fighter jets into airspace it claims but doesn't control.
The islands go by different names depending on who you ask. Japan calls them the Senkaku Islands. China calls them the Diaoyu Islands. Taiwan uses the name Tiaoyutai. The disagreement over what to call them is the least of the problems.
Why Anyone Cares About Empty Rocks
On the surface, fighting over uninhabited islands seems absurd. But look at a map and the strategic logic becomes clear. These islands sit astride critical shipping lanes that carry much of Asia's trade. The surrounding waters are rich fishing grounds. And perhaps most importantly, a 1968 United Nations survey found evidence of potentially vast oil and gas reserves beneath the seabed.
That survey matters. Before 1968, neither China nor Taiwan had formally claimed these islands. After 1968, they suddenly became vitally important Chinese territory that had allegedly been stolen by Japanese imperialism. The timing, as they say, is suspicious.
But there's something even more fundamental at stake: the reach of Chinese power into the Pacific. Control these islands and you control the approaches to Taiwan. You extend your defensive perimeter. You gain leverage over the shipping lanes that Japan—a resource-poor island nation—depends on for its economic survival.
How Japan Got the Islands in the First Place
To understand this dispute, you need to go back to the late nineteenth century, when Japan was rapidly transforming from a feudal backwater into a modern industrial power. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan began aggressively expanding its influence in Asia.
In 1879, Japan formally annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom—a chain of islands stretching from southern Japan toward Taiwan—as Okinawa Prefecture. The Ryukyus had historically occupied a peculiar position, paying tribute to both the Japanese feudal lords in Satsuma and the Chinese emperor in Beijing. Japan's annexation ended that ambiguity.
The uninhabited islands that would become known as the Senkakus lay between the Ryukyus and the Chinese coast. In 1885, the Governor of Okinawa petitioned Tokyo to formally claim them. But Japan's Foreign Minister, Inoue Kaoru, hesitated. The islands, he noted, were close to Chinese territory. They already had Chinese names. A Chinese newspaper had recently accused Japan of seizing islands off China's coast.
Inoue worried that staking a claim would provoke China. His advice was to wait—and to keep the matter out of the newspapers.
Japan waited.
War Changes Everything
In 1894, war broke out between Japan and China over influence in Korea. The First Sino-Japanese War ended in a crushing Chinese defeat. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in April 1895, China was forced to cede Taiwan and "all islands appertaining or belonging to" Taiwan to Japan.
Three months earlier, in January 1895, while the war was still raging, Japan had quietly incorporated the disputed islands into Okinawa Prefecture. The government declared them terra nullius—a Latin legal term meaning "land belonging to no one"—claiming there was no evidence they had ever been under Chinese control.
This timing is the heart of the dispute. China and Taiwan argue that Japan seized these islands as spoils of war, just like Taiwan itself, and dressed up the land grab with legal formalities. Japan argues the incorporation was separate from the war, that surveys had established the islands were unclaimed, and that the Treaty of Shimonoseki didn't include them anyway because they were already Japanese.
Both sides believe their own narrative completely.
The American Interlude
After World War Two, the United States occupied Japan and administered the Ryukyu Islands, including the Senkakus, as part of its military governance. Okinawa became a massive American military base—a position it still holds today, with over 25,000 U.S. troops stationed there.
In 1952, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, formally ending World War Two. Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan and recognized U.S. administration of the Ryukyus. China—both the Communist government in Beijing and the Nationalist government in Taiwan—had no seat at the table.
For the next two decades, the islands sat under American control. Neither China nor Taiwan formally objected. In fact, both Chinese governments published maps and documents that appeared to accept Japanese sovereignty over the islands. The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, ran an article in 1953 that referred to the islands by their Japanese name and described them as part of the U.S.-occupied Ryukyus.
An even more striking document surfaced later: a 1950 draft memo from China's Foreign Ministry that discussed the Senkaku Islands using their Japanese names and considered whether they "should be studied" for incorporation into Taiwan—suggesting Beijing understood they weren't already part of Taiwan.
These historical documents are now deeply embarrassing to Beijing. The Chinese government has reportedly confiscated over 750,000 maps since 2005 as part of a crackdown on "erroneous" cartography that shows the islands as Japanese territory.
Oil Changes Everything
In 1968, a United Nations geological survey identified the waters around the islands as potentially containing significant oil and gas deposits. The report described the continental shelf as possibly "one of the most prolific oil and gas reservoirs in the world."
Within three years, both China and Taiwan had formally claimed the islands.
Japanese commentators point to this sequence as proof that Chinese claims are motivated by resource greed rather than historical grievance. The timing is certainly striking. For twenty-five years after World War Two, China had shown no interest in these rocks. The moment oil was discovered, they became sacred national territory.
Chinese scholars have a different explanation. They argue that China was consumed by internal chaos during this period—the civil war, the Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution—and simply lacked the capacity to press territorial claims. The failure to assert sovereignty earlier, they say, doesn't extinguish historical rights that stretch back centuries.
China's Historical Claim
China's argument rests on ancient documents. The earliest Chinese written reference to these islands dates to 1403, in a navigation guide called "Voyage with the Tail Wind." By 1534, Chinese imperial envoys traveling to the Ryukyu Kingdom had identified and named all the major islands in the group.
According to Chinese historians, the islands served as navigational markers for imperial missions to the Ryukyus and as a maritime defense frontier against Japanese pirates, who plagued Chinese coastal waters during the Ming dynasty. One island in the chain, Chihweiyu, was recorded as marking the boundary between Chinese waters and the Ryukyu Kingdom—suggesting, China argues, that the islands themselves belonged to China, not the Ryukyus.
Even a Japanese map from the eighteenth century, compiled by the cartographer Hayashi Shihei, depicted the islands in the same color as Chinese territory. China points to this as evidence that even Japan historically understood the islands to be Chinese.
The clincher, in China's view, is the Potsdam Declaration of 1945, which stated that "Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine." The victorious Allied powers, China argues, had the authority to strip Japan of territory acquired through imperial conquest—and that included the Senkakus.
Japan's Rebuttal
Japan's Foreign Ministry dismisses all of this. The islands, they maintain, showed no trace of Chinese control when Japanese surveyors examined them in the 1880s. They were uninhabited. They were unclaimed. Japan acquired them lawfully through the doctrine of terra nullius, not through conquest.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan argues, is irrelevant because the islands were incorporated into Okinawa Prefecture before the treaty was signed. They were never part of "Taiwan and its appertaining islands" and therefore weren't covered by the treaty's cession provisions. Japan didn't take them from China; Japan claimed them independently.
As for the postwar period, Japan notes that the San Francisco Treaty placed the islands under U.S. administration as part of the Ryukyus—not as part of Taiwan. When the United States returned the Ryukyus to Japan in 1972, the islands came with them. China didn't object during the decades of American administration. It only started complaining after oil was discovered.
The Japanese position can be summarized bluntly: there is no dispute. The islands are Japanese. End of discussion.
2012: The Crisis Escalates
In September 2012, the Japanese government purchased three of the disputed islands from their private owner, the Kurihara family, for over twenty million dollars. The purchase was actually an attempt to defuse a crisis. The outspoken governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, had launched a fundraising campaign to buy the islands and build infrastructure on them—a move that would have been far more provocative.
By nationalizing the islands, the Japanese government hoped to prevent Ishihara's plans and keep the status quo. But China saw it very differently. Beijing viewed the purchase as a deliberate escalation, an attempt by Japan to consolidate control over territory that China considered rightfully Chinese.
Massive anti-Japanese protests erupted across China. Demonstrators attacked Japanese businesses and burned Japanese cars. Japanese factories shut down. Trade between the two countries plummeted. The Chinese government sent patrol boats into waters around the islands, beginning a pattern of incursions that continues today.
In November 2013, China upped the ante by declaring an "Air Defense Identification Zone" covering the East China Sea, including the disputed islands. All aircraft entering the zone, China announced, would be required to file flight plans and identify themselves. Japan, the United States, and South Korea immediately sent military aircraft through the zone without complying, demonstrating that they didn't recognize China's authority.
America's Uncomfortable Position
The United States finds itself in an awkward spot. Officially, Washington takes no position on who owns the islands. This neutrality is deliberate—the U.S. doesn't want to be seen as siding with Japan against China on a sovereignty question.
But there's a catch. The 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan commits America to defend "the territories under the Administration of Japan." And the islands are unquestionably administered by Japan. Every American president since Obama has publicly confirmed that the treaty applies to the Senkakus.
This means the United States has committed to going to war with China—a nuclear-armed power—to defend five uninhabited islands that America doesn't even claim to know who owns. It's a remarkable situation, and it illustrates just how dangerous this dispute has become.
Taiwan's Lonely Position
Taiwan's claim to the islands is identical to China's—both base their arguments on the same historical documents and the same interpretation of postwar treaties. But Taiwan and China don't coordinate their positions. When China invited Taiwan in 2012 to work together against Japan, Taiwan refused.
The reason is obvious: Taiwan has its own sovereignty dispute with China. Beijing claims Taiwan as a breakaway province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland. Taipei can't exactly team up with Beijing on territorial claims when Beijing considers Taipei itself to be stolen territory.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council put it plainly: "The Republic of China and Mainland China will not deal with the Tiaoyutai Islands disputes together. We already have sovereignty disputes."
The Bigger Picture
Some Chinese commentators have pushed claims that go far beyond the Senkakus. They argue that the entire Ryukyu chain, including Okinawa itself—home to over a million Japanese citizens—should be reconsidered as potentially Chinese territory. The Ryukyus, after all, paid tribute to China for centuries. Japan's annexation of the islands in 1879 was, in this view, just as illegitimate as its later acquisition of Taiwan.
These claims remain fringe, but they appear in state-affiliated media often enough that the New York Times described the campaign as "semiofficial." Whether they represent genuine territorial ambitions or merely rhetorical pressure to strengthen China's position on the Senkakus is unclear.
What is clear is that this dispute isn't going away. Japan controls the islands and won't give them up. China and Taiwan claim them and won't stop asserting that claim. The United States is treaty-bound to defend them while officially taking no position on who owns them.
Ships and aircraft from China and Japan encounter each other in these waters regularly. Every patrol, every incursion, every scrambled fighter jet carries the risk of miscalculation. A collision, a shot fired in confusion, a nationalistic captain making an unauthorized decision—any of these could trigger a crisis that spirals beyond anyone's control.
Over five empty islands that nobody lives on, but that everyone seems willing to fight for.