Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

What happened in the Senkakus is really quite simple, despite forty years of attempts to complicate it by the two Chinese governments, the ROC (on Taiwan) and the PRC (in Beijing). In 1895 Japan annexed the Senkakus, which at the time nobody claimed to own. For some seventy years there were no protests from either the ROC (Taiwan) or the PRC (Beijing). However, in 1968 a report by the Committee for the Co-ordination of Joint Prospecting for Mineral Resources in Asian Offshore Areas of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), identified great potential for fossil fuel energy resources under the East China Sea. In 1971, after Okinawa was returned to Japan (the ROC (Taiwan) protested this) both the ROC (Taiwan) and PRC (Beijing) governments laid claim to the Senkakus, which they call the Diaoyutai Islands, the name they've been known as in Chinese for several centuries. Recall that both governments claim to represent "China".

That is the essence of the dispute. Currently both ROC (Taiwan) and PRC (Beijing) argue that the Diaoyutai are part of Taiwan, which, they both argue is part of China (under international law, most powers regard Taiwan's status as undetermined). They buttress their claims based on ancient maps and texts. More on that in a moment, but here are two bleakly salient facts:

1. ...between 1895 and 1970, neither Chinese government ever registered any protest over the Senkaku Islands. On all texts and maps produced by the PRC (Beijing) and ROC (Taiwan) the Senkakus are identified as Japanese and generally, their Japanese names are used. No maps or texts identify the islands' ownership as controversial.

2. ...after 1971, both governments hastily altered their official maps in the best 1984 style to reflect this historically new claim, and then further claimed that the islands had been "Chinese" all along. The idea that "ancient history" supports the Chinese claim to the Senkakus has arisen only since this time.

Let's look at the evidence..... first, the ROC (Taiwan).

ROC (Taiwan)

Although many of us in the Asian blogosphere know about the map alterations (as does the media, which rarely reports on them), I was nevertheless delighted when a longtime reader of my blog alerted me to this recent paper entitled The Diaoyutai Islands on Taiwan’s Official Maps: Pre- and Post-1971 (Asian Affairs: An American Review, 39:90–105, 2012) by Ko-hua Yap, Yu-wen Chen, and Ching-chi Huang. They write by way of introduction:



"This research report is the first to present irrefutable evidence of the ROC government’s change of position from excluding to including the Diaoyutai Islands in the ROC’s territory in the early 1970s. The evidence lies in cartographic information produced by the ROC government before the 1970s, which had always tacitly assumed that the Diaoyutai Islands were part of the Ryukyu Islands, not under the ROC’s sovereign control. Not until 1971 and 1972 did the Taiwanese government modify official maps—such as national atlases, military topographic maps, and maps in national textbooks—labelling the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Taiwan or using the “Taiwanese name” (i.e., Diaoyutai Islands, Tiaoyutai Islets) to identify these islands."

Yap et al examine four cases of how official texts and documents were altered. First, they instance the government-produced Taiwan Statistical Abstract. From 1946 to 1971, they observe, this text identified the northernmost point of Taiwan as Pengjia Islet, one of the three small islands off the northeast coast of Taiwan ( example ). But on Dec 2, 1971 the government announced that the Senkakus/Diaoyutai belonged to China and were administrated by Yilan county. The 1972 abstract was then duly altered, and Kuba Jima and Taisho Jima in the Senkakus were presented as the northernmost and easternmost points of Taiwan in all subsequent versions of this text.

They then move on to the official maps. First they present the National War College atlases of Taiwan and China. They write:



"Evidence of the ROC’s shift of stance on the Diaoyutai Islands is also displayed in the NWC productions. For instance, in the National Atlas of China Vol. 1, the theme of which is Taiwan Province, the Diaoyutai Islands were not included in the first (1959), second (1963), or even third (1967) editions. It was only in 1972, when the fourth edition of the National Atlas of China Vol. 1 was published, that the Diaoyutai Islands were shown as part of Taiwan’s territory."

Here is the relevant map:

...the top map is the 1959, 1963, and 1967 edition. In the 1972 map there is a new inset box, depicting the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Taiwan. Then they, note, something else new appeared on this map:



It is equally interesting to note that, on the copyright page of the revised version, a line states that “the delineation of boundaries on the maps must not be considered authoritative.” This line never appeared in the original edition or in any other volumes of the National Atlas of China or the Grand Atlas of the World.

Yap et al argue that (obviously) the line appeared there because the mapmakers knew perfectly well that they could not backdate their claim to the Senkakus because the previous maps undermined their claim. Further, they note, the revision was prepared in a rush and the proofreaders appeared to have missed that the. Needless to say, that was corrected in subsequent editions. Even in maps produced by the ROC government prior to its flight to Taiwan in the wake of its defeat in the Chinese Civil War do not show that the Senkakus are part of Taiwan ( 1947 example and 1948 example ). The idea that Diaoyutai/Senkakus are part of Taiwan is strictly a post-1971 claim.



This map is from the National War Colllege's official world atlas in the pre-1972 edition. Like all texts produced in Taiwan prior to 1971, it shows the Senkakus as part of the Ryukyus, the Okinawan chain, and as Japanese territory. Note that the Japanese names for the islands are used (color image) and that there is no warning that there is a controversy over the islands. After 1972, the Senkakus are referred to as the Diaoyutais and are identified as Chinese.

The next example Yap et al refer to is the national junior high school textbooks. These were produced by the government and were for official use throughout the nation's schools. Again, until 1970, these showed the Senkakus as Japanese and used the Japanese names for them. Without mention of controversy. And again, in 1971, after the ROC reversed 60 years of placid acceptance of Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus, the group of islands magically morphed into the Diaoyutai and were part of the ROC.



Military topographic maps are my favorite case in this study, producing a hilarious moment of unintentional insecurity about the map. Yap et al first put up a figure showing the 1962 topographic map set produced by the Combined Service Forces (CSF). That map has a set of dashed lines showing a boundary which put the Senkakus inside Japanese territory and noting that it derived from the Treaty of San Francisco. It did not, I should observe, note that there was any controversy. Then comes this flash of comic brilliance in the 1975 CSF map. The dotted lines and warning about the SF Peace Treaty are gone, and some kindly bureaucrat has drawn a line to the Senkakus, in case the peruser of the map missed this new territorial claim.

PRC (Beijing)

This excellent Taiwan map blog in a post entitled Why the Diaoyutai are Japanese also has a collection of maps and texts from Beijing in the pre-1971 period that show exactly the same phenomena -- no connection of the Senkakus with Taiwan, identification of the Senkakus as Japanese territory, and use of their Japanese names (in Chinese) for them. I've borrowed some here.

Here is an image of a 1953 Renminerbao piece that not only identifies the Senkakus as part of Okinawa and Japan, but uses their Japanese names for them.

A pre-1971 PRC (Beijing) map of Taiwan does not include the Diaoyutai. Similar examples of early maps of Taiwan from Beijing without the Senkakus/Diaoyutai include this, this, and this 1954 map.

This 1958 map from the Beijing Map Publishing Company not only locates the Senkakus inside Japanese territory but uses the Japanese names for them as well.

This 1959 Taiwan geography text published in Beijing, like its counterpart of the ROC (Taiwan) I discussed above, describes the northernmost and easternmost points of Taiwan as the little islets of its northeast coast, and then goes on to mention the Senkakus by their Japanese name and describe how they lie off Taiwan and belong to the Ryukyus.

1960: this Beijing Map Publishing map of Japan shows the Senkakus as Japanese and part of Japan.

The famous classified 1969 PRC map that shows the Senkakus as Japanese and gives their name in Japanese is here.

One could adduce many more (that post does). But it should be quite clear that in both capitals, Taipei (ROC) and Beijing (PRC) neither Chinese government thought of the Senkakus as the Diaoyutai and belonging to China, but rather, viewed the islands as part of the Rykuyu chain, used their Japanese names for them, and assigned their sovereignty to Japan. Even more crucially, none of these maps contains a claim that the Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus is disputed by either or both Chinese governments.

If you've come this far, you now understand what has happened. The sequence of events is actually:

1. Oil and gas potential announced for the Senkakus

2. Okinawa returned to Japan

3. The two Chinese governments claimed the Senkakus.

4. The two Chinese governments then begin rummaging through Chinese history to find arguments to support the new claim, and begin behaving as if (1) the islands were stolen territory and (2) they had always belonged to China and (3) there had always been a controversy.

The claim that the Senkakus were Chinese of old is a purely modern claim, retrojected into the past by expansionists in Beijing and Taipei to justify their annexation of the Senkakus..

Thus, one of the most important functions of the constant iteration of “5,000 thousand years of history!” is that it creates in the minds of hearers an entirely fictive politico-historical continuity that China uses to buttress these very real and very dangerous territorial claims.

One of the ways that westerners exoticize China is that we accept these completely laughable, simpleminded, and historically inaccurate and anachronistic claims, whereas if Italy demanded the Mediterranean and France based on Rome, or Ankara was claiming the entire North African seaboard, Bulgaria, and Saudi Arabia based on the Ottomans, or the Macedonians wanted a chunk of India because Alexander once battled there, everyone would immediately realize how fantastically archaic this kind of thinking is. Yet we allow China to get away with it.

This is why the Japanese government maintains "there is no dispute" since it knows perfectly well (who better?) that the controversy dates from the announcement of oil underneath the islands and did not exist prior to that time.

Crystal Ball Time

What's next? It should be obvious. Rightists in Beijing and their tiny coterie of counterparts in Taipei all believe that Okinawa is "stolen territory" on the grounds that prior to the Japanese seizure and incorporation of the islands, they paid tribute to the Chinese ruling dynasty. In many Chinese minds Okinawa and the Senkakus (and Taiwan) are linked; their claims to those territories are all of a piece. WaPo had a good article on such individuals a while back.



In a fiery editorial this month, the Global Times newspaper urged Beijing to consider challenging Japan’s control over its southern prefecture of Okinawa, an island chain with a population of 1.4 million people that bristles with U.S. military bases. “China should not be afraid of engaging with Japan in a mutual undermining of territorial integrity,” the Communist Party-run paper declared. Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan, head of the strategy research institute at China’s National Defense University, went even further. He told state-run radio that limiting discussion to the Diaoyu was “too narrow,” saying Beijing should question ownership of the whole Ryukyu archipelago, which by some definitions extends beyond Okinawa.

Okinawa is under the US security umbrella. So are, Sec of Def Panetta recently reiterated, the Senkakus. That means those rocks in the ocean are under the US nuclear umbrella with all that entails. Nor should this issue be dismissed as much ado about nothing -- this is one of many such Chinese claims on its neighbors, including the Philippines which has a security treaties with the US. There is much at stake here: this could well be our generation's "some damned thing in the Balkans."

ADDENDUM: Han-yi Shaw in the NYTimes

Last week the nation's major paper of record published a shameful propaganda screed from Chinese nationalist scholar Han-yi Shaw, on Kristof's column and fronted approvingly by him. Shaw has been writing on this topic for quite some time. His magnum opus is available online. The NYTimes piece leaves out a key piece of information that makes Shaw's position more rational than it really is, because if the paper's gentle readers saw it in print they would immediately realize an inconvenient truth: that Han-yi Shaw is a right-wing Chinese expansionist following a Chinese-invented Sinocentric form of sovereignty that hands all of Asia to China. Here is what he says in the long paper:



...Many Chinese scholars have argued that when evaluating the various historical evidence put forth by the Chinese side, one must not fail to recognize the important political realities of the time from which they originated, namely, an era characterized by the East Asian World Order (otherwise known as the Chinese World Order). The underlying concern is the following: whether principles of modern international law, which has its origin in the European tradition of international order, can properly judge a territorial dispute involving countries historically belonging under the East Asian World Order with fundamentally different ordering principles from its European counterpart. First and foremost, it should be noted that the East Asian World Order was a system of international relations characterized as Sinocentric and hierarchical rather than one based on sovereign equality of nations. Under such a framework, relations between nations were not governed by principles of international law known to the West, but instead by what is know as the "tributary system" instituted by China.

Shaw essentially claims that there are Chinese scholars arguing that if China says someone paid tribute to it at some point in history, China can determine the sovereignty in its favor, and that this is a good thing. I doubt one can find many Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Japanese, Thai, or Vietnamese scholars to support this. It is hard to imagine a mindset more self-serving and expansionist than this. Imagine if the NYTimes column had been fronted by this nonsense that China has its own special sovereignty that applies only to itself. This is why that highly misleading column is framed as an attack on Japan's position rather than an announcement of his own with copious evidence, maps, and charts. If Shaw put forth his own position, everyone would laugh it. My long blogpost on the NYTimes piece is here

Vorkosigan