Defending the islands, defending the self: Taiwan, sovereignty and the origin of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute as ontological security-seeking

Abstract

The dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is generally analysed as a Sino-Japanese competition over material and strategic interests, regional preponderance, and nationalistic symbolism. Yet, such explanations cannot fully explain the endurance of the conflict and overlook its origin in the period leading up to the UN’s derecognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty in 1971. Drawing on the concept of ontological security, defined as ‘security of the self’, we contend that it was the looming loss of its sovereign self that prompted Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC) to assert itself as the true defender of Chinese interests by laying claim to the islands. This caused anxiety in China (People’s Republic of China, PRC), which had to follow suit in order to secure its own sovereign self. China thus inherited the conflict with Japan when it took over the ‘true China’ mantle upon its entry to the UN in 1971. Extant explanations overlook the important factor of inter-Chinese competition over sovereign selfhood. In developing this argument, the article makes two contributions. First, it draws attention to a much-overlooked early phase of the dispute, and shows how the same dynamics of ROC–PRC status competition continue to inform the dispute between China and Japan today. Second, it contributes to the literature on ontological security by conceptualising the ‘self’ as sovereign state personhood, thereby further clarifying the distinction between self and identity, and highlighting the relational effects of ontological security-seeking.

Keywords:

• China
• Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute
• ontological security
• sovereignty
• Taiwan

Introduction

A clutch of eight uninhabited islets in the Western Pacific has become one of the most important bilateral issues in Sino-Japanese relations, and one of the most headlines-grabbing flashpoints in the Asia-Pacific region. The islands, called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku Islands in Japanese,¹ are currently administered by Japan as part of its Okinawa Prefecture, but are also claimed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC, hereafter also China) and the Republic of China (ROC, hereafter also Taiwan) as an inherent part of Chinese territory that should have been returned to China after Japan’s defeat in World War II.² The dispute does not only involve competing claims to sovereignty on the basis of different historical interpretations, but also claims to the natural resources in the vicinity of the islands, and disagreements about the interpretation of international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The conflict arose in the late 1960s and has, since then, undergone multiple phases, reaching its highest level of escalation in the early 2010s as a result of increased instances of confrontation between PRC and Japanese patrol vessels and Japan’s nationalisation of the islands in 2012.

The extant scholarship conventionally explores the dispute in the context of Japan–PRC relations, with some degrees of US involvement (Eldridge, 2013; Smith, 2013), and attributes it to the islands’ material and strategic value (Baldacchino et al., 2017, ch. 5; Costa, 2018, ch. 3; Sato, 2019), their historical symbolism in the context of rising nationalism (Bukh, 2020; Costa, 2018), Sino-Japanese competition over regional preponderance (Nakano, 2016), or the islands’ usefulness as a diplomatic bargaining chip (Wiegand, 2009). While such explanations provide insights into important aspects of the dispute, they overlook, first, that the conflict originated when Taiwan, not China, challenged Japanese claims to the islands, and second, that it emerged at a time when the ROC’s international standing as a sovereign state was becoming increasingly precarious due to the world’s gradual acceptance of the communist regime on mainland China. Thus, by analysing the dispute solely in the context of Sino-Japanese relations, much of the literature neglects the unstable nature of state selves and falls into the trap of projecting present-day motives into the past. This leaves it unable to account for the intractable nature of the conflict.

To counter this tendency and reveal a so far missing aspect of the dispute, we draw on Ontological Security Studies (OSS) but develop it further by advancing the distinction between self and identity. Defining ontological security as every actor’s existential need to feel secure in their sense of self and the world they find themselves in, we link this ‘security of the self’ to state personhood as distinct from state identity. Consequently, when from the mid-1960s onwards the situation of the ROC became increasingly precarious, with looming rapprochement between the US and China and the potential loss of support for its claim to representing the ‘true’ China, this not only threatened the Kuomintang’s (KMT or the Chinese Nationalist Party) domestic legitimacy, but also the ROC’s self as the only independent and sovereign Chinese state on the international stage.³ We suggest that the exceptional situation of an impending loss of legitimacy and sovereignty created existential anxieties within the ROC, which it addressed by engaging in bordering practices. Specifically, we argue that the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands took on a different meaning for the ROC, from an area for resource exploitation to a symbol of ROC autonomous selfhood, as it made use of the emerging dispute to reassert its statehood vis-à-vis the PRC. Hence, it is the contention of this article that the importance of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands during the formative years of the dispute is located in inter-Chinese relations, specifically in PRC–ROC competition over the title to being the ‘true’ and only sovereign China, and that some of these competing claims continue to inform the conflict between China and Japan today. Understanding that the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute is linked to China–Taiwan relations is important for understanding the entrenched nature of the conflict and crucial for its potential resolution.⁴

To make this argument the next section first provides an overview of how the dispute is conventionally considered in the literature. This is followed by the introduction of the concept of ontological security and its relationship to state personhood. Section Four narrates the lead-up to the dispute in conjunction with the ROC’s gradual derecognition, before Section Five considers the present-day implications for the dispute in the context of ontological security-seeking. The conclusion summarises the main argument, comments on its implications for the ontological security literature, and raises avenues for further research.

Gauging the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute

The dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is often analysed in the context of Sino-Japanese relations and portrayed as a volatile regional ‘flashpoint’ (Nakano, 2016, p. 167; Smith, 2013, p. 41) or ‘battleground’ (Patalano, 2013, p. 48) with the potential of sparking armed conflict between China and Japan/the US. Consequently, the dispute has received a lot of scholarly attention as scholars have sought to elucidate both claimants’ historical and legal positions (Kim, 2021, pp. 262–265; Liao, Hara, & Wiegand, 2015; Suganuma, 2000), and advanced both short- and long-term solutions for resolving the conflict (Baldacchino et al., 2017; Midford, 2015; Szanto, 2018), or at least avoiding military escalation (Patalano, 2013; Ramos-Mrosovsky, 2015). Yet, in order to make conflict resolution possible it is first necessary to understand why the dispute is so entrenched in the first place (Krickel-Choi et al., 2022), and here scholars have put forth a variety of competing and overlapping explanations as to why China and Japan pursue the islets.

Some of the most common explanations are material in nature, highlighting the importance of the islands for access to hydrocarbon resources and subsequently tracing the origin of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute to the 1968 UN exploratory survey, which identified potential oil and gas resources in the area (Jie, 2021, p. 3; Kim, 2021, p. 261). Sato, for example, argues that China’s need for natural resources, in the face of a growing population and soaring energy demand, was the main reason behind the origin of the dispute in the 1970s (2019, pp. 55–56). Relatedly, the area is also home to rich fishing grounds, which are another important economic resource in an era of increasing ocean depletion (Dupont & Baker, 2014). These resource-focused explanations are sometimes linked to strategic ones, which foreground the access the islands give to sea lanes of communication (Wirth, 2012, p. 227) and their potential role in a future military conflict, where they could be used to cut China off from the Western Pacific Ocean (Wirth, 2012, p. 228) and form a Japanese defensive point against Chinese aggression (Seki, 2020, pp. 226–228). Wiegand (2009) even argues that the value of the islands stems from the diplomatic leverage they offer to gain diplomatic concessions in a complicated bilateral relationship. Such rationalist accounts often assume the narrative frame of a ‘power shift’ (Hagström, 2012), whereby Sino-Japanese actions with regard to the islands are viewed through a balance-of-power lens (Smith, 2013, p. 28), a change in which increases threat perception (Nakano, 2016).

While it is not unreasonable to assume that the claimants are interested in the material resources of the area, rationalist accounts cannot sufficiently explain the entrenched nature of the dispute. The economic and strategic value of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is at best uncertain (Bukh, 2020, p. 130; Hwang & Frettingham, 2018, p. 58; Wirth, 2012, pp. 228–231), and if the dispute was merely about economic gains, a resource-sharing solution could likely be found. The intractable character of the dispute suggests that it is primarily about sovereignty, which is not bargainable (Nakano, 2016, p. 170). Additionally, such explanations assume that the concerned states are already formed, stable entities with pre-given identities, capable of undertaking rational, interest-seeking policies in relation to the islands dispute. This ignores the essentially malleable and ambiguous nature of identities and the Westphalian state system as a whole (Chen, B., 2014a, p. 108; Chen, C., 2014b; Ling & Nakamura, 2019).

Consequently, more promising explanations shift the focus to the islands’ symbolic value and highlight rising nationalism and competing identity narratives as factors driving the conflict. Bukh (2020) points towards civic, rather than state-led, identification processes and traces the dispute to the ‘Protect the Diaoyutai’ (Bao-Diao) movement in the early 1970s, whereby national identity entrepreneurs linked the islands to Chinese nationalism at a time of domestic crisis. Costa, too, describes the islands dispute as an ‘endless sport event’ (2018, p. 158) through which Chinese and Japanese leaders regularly invoke the symbolic value of the islands in the context of national identity construction at home and competition over regional preponderance abroad. Hwang and Frettingham (2018), meanwhile, advance an ontological security explanation for the conflict’s intractability, showing how ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is intimately linked to the claimants’ competing narratives of victimhood. Many of these accounts mention the 1972 reversion treaty as the origin of the dispute (Eldridge, 2013; Hwang & Frettingham, 2018, p. 41; Smith, 2013), as opposed to the earlier discovery of potential oil and gas deposits. There is also a strong focus on the 2010 trawler incident and the 2012 Japanese nationalisation of the islands to demonstrate how ‘national identity issues surface most prominently where national security strategies are concerned’ (Chen, B., 2014a, p. 109; Hagström, 2012; Yennie Lindgren & Lindgren, 2017).

While such explanations illuminate important aspects of the dispute and get us closer to an account of why it is seemingly so difficult to solve, they overlook that the conflict over the islands emerged prior to the reversion treaty of 1972. This is significant because, at the time, it was Taiwan, not the PRC, who was one of the originators of the dispute and Japan’s primary interlocutor when the conflict first emerged (Kawashima, 2013; Smith, 2013). What is more, the ROC found itself in an extraordinary situation, locked in a legitimacy battle with mainland China and fighting for its international survival as a sovereign state. While much of the literature mentions in passing that Taiwan, too, is one of the claimants of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, only few works actually consider Taiwan’s involvement at the beginning of the dispute (Suganuma, 2000) and none mention its increasingly precarious international position. Duan comes closest to accounting for the inter-Chinese legitimacy battle, noting that in the onset stage of the dispute ‘Beijing was targeting Taipei, not oil’ (Duan, 2019, p. 420). Even though Duan’s analysis is to be commended for explicitly considering the circumstances at the time decisions were made, he makes no mention of Taiwan’s looming derecognition and how that might have shaped the future conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

Thus, by analysing the dispute solely in the context of Sino-Japanese relations, the scholarship privileges the dispute’s contemporary, post-Cold War implications and neglects the formative years of the conflict. A closer look at the dispute’s beginning reveals, however, that the PRC did not formally claim the islands as ‘Chinese’ until December 1971, after it had taken over the Chinese seat at the UN in October that year. Further, while Taiwan always disputed Japanese sovereignty over the islands, it did not claim them for itself on the basis of territorial sovereignty until June 1971, some two years after the discovery of potential oil and gas fields. Any explanation of the conflict, therefore, also has to account for Taiwan’s change in policy during that period. Building on works that have highlighted the unstable nature of state actors and the sovereign state system, we propose that incorporating the ROC’s loss of international standing and sovereign recognition adds an important piece to explaining the origin and endurance of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute. We suggest that by not paying adequate attention to the early years of the dispute, scholars have risked conflating present motives with past ones, and overlooked the crucial factor of PRC–ROC competition over international recognition and domestic legitimacy, which continues to shape the conflict to this day. To further illuminate Taiwan’s motives at the time, we turn to the literature on ontological security.

Ontological security and the performance of state personhood

In International Relations (IR) the concept of ontological security is most commonly defined as ‘security not of the body but of the self, the subjective sense of who one is’ (Mitzen, 2006, p. 344), and conceived in terms of a stable identity (Rumelili, 2015, p. 57) and an ‘ontological self-identity need’ (Mälksoo, 2015, p. 224). It refers to a sense of trust in the constancy and stability of one’s social and material environment, and the belief that the world one finds oneself in is what it appears to be (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 746). Since it takes a degree of certainty to know how to act and what to do, a feeling of ontological security is a prerequisite for agency. Generally, ontological security is sustained via routinised interactions with others, which indicate the routinised recognition and reaffirmation of one’s sense of self and one’s biographical narrative (Greve, 2018). If such routines of recognition are interrupted, however, this can lead to a critical situation, which undermines the actor’s sense of self and creates uncertainty about the proper course of action (Ejdus, 2018, 2020; Steele, 2008). The anxieties that result trigger strong emotional responses and can be of an existential nature (Browning, 2018; Laing, 1990), ‘so intolerable that [they] must be defended against by whatever means available’ (Cash, 2020, p. 311). The self under threat needs to be reaffirmed. A key insight of OSS is, consequently, that the pursuit of ontological security can supersede all other concerns. This does not mean that actors are not concerned with their physical security or do not have material interests, but that these concerns can take a backseat when an actor is faced with extreme ontological anxiety.

While experienced individually, ontological security is a fundamentally social phenomenon, reinforced through interactions with others and dependent on other actors’ judgement and recognition (Oppermann & Hansel, 2019; Pacher, 2019). It captures the fact that selves do not form in isolation but always in conjunction with others, for example through processes of assimilation, differentiation, or temporal othering (Bachleitner, 2021; Darwich, 2016; Greve, 2018; Haastrup, Duggan, & Mah, 2021; Rumelili, 2015). Hence, the social environment is profoundly important for the development of a sense of self, and it is partly due to these social dynamics of subject-formation that the pursuit of recognition and ontological security can have relational effects. That is to say, one actor’s source of ontological security can be another actor’s source of anxiety. In situations where multiple actors’ identity narratives implicate each other, this can lead to protracted tensions and make conflict resolution difficult (Akchurina & Della Sala, 2018; Hwang & Frettingham, 2018; Rumelili & Çelik, 2017). OSS thus demands that we take the relational aspect of international politics seriously.

Even though the ontological security scholarship has made profound inroads into the study of actor motivation, and greatly enhanced our understanding of actors’ security concerns, it has also been criticised on multiple grounds. Notably, critics have taken issue with the application of an individual-level concept to collective actors like states (Croft, 2012; Krolikowski, 2008; Lebow, 2016), and highlighted a lack of clarity regarding whether the source of ontological security is to be found internally or externally to the self (Rumelili, 2015; Zarakol, 2010). Building on sophisticated arguments for dealing with these criticisms (Flockhart, 2016; Karp, 2018; Mitzen, 2006; Narozhna, 2020; Steele, 2008), we take the position that the concept of ontological security can be usefully applied wherever there is agentic behaviour, including at the state level, and that its sources can be simultaneously located internally and externally. This is because struggles for identity and selfhood are not limited to one arena, but, as the examples of populism or national identification indicate, play out (internally) at the individual and societal level and (externally) at the level of state interaction (Steele, 2019, p. 325).

However, where we would like to make a theoretical intervention is in regard to another criticism, which the scholarship has so far not sufficiently addressed. The criticism pertains to the frequent conceptual conflation of ‘self’ and ‘identity’ whereby the meanings of the two are collapsed into one (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017; Flockhart, 2016), so that ontological security comes to be defined as both ‘security of the self’ (Agius, 2017, p. 109) and ‘security of identity’ (Gustafsson, 2014, p. 71; Hwang & Frettingham, 2018, p. 44; Narozhna, 2020, p. 559) in the literature. This is problematic on at least two accounts. First, such a collapsing tends to view all change as bad and reduce ontological security to the preservation of existing identities (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017, pp. 33–34). This not only invites justification for the securitisation of others (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017, p. 39), and is thus ethically problematic, but also makes it difficult to account for agent-led change and behavioural adaptations (Flockhart, 2016). Second, it conflates subjects with identity when it would be productive to investigate the relation between the two (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017, p. 40). An example of this is the common tendency in OSS to take states as given. Since the literature does not differentiate between statehood and identity, crucial phenomena, like the ontological security effects of state sovereignty and how they differ from identity-related issues, remain outside of the literature’s analytical view (Krickel-Choi, 2022c).

We propose that these criticisms can be addressed if we take seriously, and further adapt, the constructivist claim that it is possible for actors to change their identities ‘while keeping a stable, acting self’ (Barbato, 2016, p. 561). Self and identity are arguably not the same, with the former indicating a subject, a continuous entity endowed with autonomous agency, while identity refers to the various narratives and role expectations which inform that entity’s behaviour. This does not mean that either self or identity is in any way ‘essential’ or pre-given (contra Wendt, 1999), both are the result of social processes, but it does mean that the self is comparatively more stable and in many ways a precondition for identification. The distinction we have in mind is similar to the distinction made by Deleuze and Guattari (1986) between form and content, whereby form is the feel or texture (of the surface) of a material while content is its material substance. Similarly, form can refer to the shape of something, while content indicates its colour. Anything with a shape has to have a colour, and vice versa, but the two denote distinct properties. Thus, form and content always appear together but are nonetheless conceptually distinct. In our conception of ontological security, self resembles form while identity corresponds to content, suggesting a way to distinguish self from identity and facilitating separating threats to the self from threats to identity more clearly.

With regard to states, the self can be understood in terms of state personhood, on the basis of which states articulate and enact various role-identities (Krickel-Choi, 2022a, p. 171). The difference between the two lies in personhood being fundamentally about sameness, about being an autonomous and ontologically equal member of the category of states bestowed with dignity, while identity is about differentiating oneself from other persons in that category (Krickel-Choi, 2022c, pp. 11–12). States acquire the status of being a state person as a result of being routinely treated and recognised as a sovereign state within the context of ‘the general practice of sovereignty’ (Loh & Heiskanen, 2020, p. 287). Yet, ‘stateness’ is not simply given but needs to be continuously performed and reenacted, for example through bordering practices like the discursive articulation of sameness and otherness (Campbell, 1998; Cervi & Tejedor, 2022; Neumann, 2016), biopolitical practices of registration and categorisation (Salter, 2006), or practices related to citizenship and the granting of rights (McNevin, 2011). However, most relevant in the context of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute is bordering in its most literal sense, i.e. the drawing of a line on a map to establish a boundary between two states. This is not only because territory is a necessary feature of states, with the ability to protect one’s territory being a hallmark of functional and capable states, but also because the dispute emerged at a time when Taiwan could no longer take its continuing existence for granted.

Given that the claim to recognition as an equal member of international society is among the most powerful claims to selfhood a state can make (Hwang & Frettingham, 2018, p. 60), making sovereignty integral to states’ ontological security (Grzybowski, 2022), it stands to reason that the ROC’s loss of international recognition constituted a critical situation generative of existential anxieties which it needed to address. While it is a coincidence that the conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands emerged during this period, it cannot but have been affected by Taiwan’s situation at the time, which is thus an important factor to consider in the origin and development of the dispute. Distinguishing more clearly between self and identity should help us see this previously overlooked factor more clearly. Specifically, we would expect greater emphasis on sovereignty, autonomy and dignity the more the ROC’s self as a state person comes under threat, beyond re-articulations of Taiwan’s role-identities. Articulations of self and identity always go together as ‘[a] state needs to constantly search for an object upon which it can exercise sovereignty to construct or reinforce its national identity’ (Chen, B., 2014a, p. 115), yet the two are nonetheless distinct.

To trace the development of the discourse about the dispute in Taiwan, we consider official ROC statements and documents, academic accounts analysing primary sources, as well as relevant Taiwanese newspapers and magazines published in the early 1970s. Examining the latter is rare in the extant literature but useful, as all of them were either state-sanctioned or toeing the party line. They thus help to illuminate the existential anxieties the ROC was facing during this critical time period. In the analysis that follows, we treat the ROC, the KMT, and Chiang Kai-shek largely synonymously, since Taiwan was a one-party authoritarian state during the Cold War. This does not imply that all people on the island of Taiwan shared the government’s opinion.

The origins of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute amidst Taiwan’s sovereign derecognition

It may be tempting to associate the loss of Taiwan’s statehood with its ousting from the UN on 25 October 1971. However, as Visoka observes, ‘[t]he derecognition of states is not a single act but a complex, lengthy process’. It consists of, first, domestic and international contestation; second, the persuasion of other states; and third, the severing of diplomatic ties and freezing of recognition (Visoka, 2019, pp. 322–323). Taiwan’s derecognition did not happen overnight, but was foreshadowed by an increased presence of the PRC on the international stage and a marked change in US policy (Tucker, 2005). It was also a process that generated significant anxiety within the ROC government, whose continued existence was not a given at the time, and subsequently led to a change in meaning attributed to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. We can see this is if we trace Taiwan’s progression through the three phases of derecognition outlined by Visoka during the time the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute first emerged.

Mid-1960s to 1970: State contestation and the emergence of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute

For the first two decades of the Cold War, the ROC’s sovereign recognition was relatively secure due to the US’ focus on containing international communism. As a result of the strong anti-communist credentials it had acquired even before the Chinese Civil War, the ROC had the explicit support of the US and occupied the Chinese seat in the UN Security Council (Rich & Dahmer, 2019, p. 366). The resulting legitimacy as the sole representative of China translated into international recognition, so that in 1950 Taipei hosted twice as many embassies as Beijing (Rich & Dahmer, 2019, p. 365). However, from the mid-1960s onwards the international climate slowly began to change. Beijing formulated the ‘One China Principle’,⁵ which foreclosed the possibility of dual recognition, and expanded its diplomatic ties (Fukuda, 2013). In 1964 France became the first major western country to establish diplomatic relations with mainland China,⁶ and it was around this time that voices in the US began to argue for the need to engage with the PRC. Future-president Richard Nixon, for example, made it known that he did not believe that the KMT would ever return to the mainland, and in 1967 penned an article about the need to end the PRC’s isolation (Tucker, 2005, p. 116). At the same time, the influence of the formerly strong Taiwanese lobby in the US began to wane and the KMT government, while growing increasingly anxious, was unable to decide on a strategy to deal with this changed situation (Tucker, 2005, pp. 118–121). There might even have been some initial denial of the impending change in policy on the part of Chiang Kai-Shek, due to the KMT having fought the fascists as a wartime ally.

By the end of the decade, and especially with the election of Nixon as US president in 1969, the ROC’s position as the one and only legitimate Chinese state had become increasingly precarious. This coincided with the 1968 UN-led explorative survey that found potential oil and gas deposits in the area around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Although the KMT government had not previously voiced concerns over the sovereignty status of these uninhabited islets, it initiated the ratification of the Convention on the Continental Shelf treaty in 1969, arguing that the ROC had the right to economic development under the treaty (Kawashima, 2013, p. 130). That same year, the US announced its intention to return the islets, as part of the Ryukyu Islands, to Japan by 1972—a decision that was unacceptable to the ROC not only because it potentially undermined its economic rights, but also because it indicated a disregard for the Chinese war effort and the Chinese soldiers who had fought against the kind of imperialism that Japanese control over the Ryukyu Islands represented (Lin, 2016, p. 122).

In January 1970 the KMT government decided to change the name of the islands in question, which had up to this point been known by their Japanese designation ‘Senkaku’, to the historical Chinese name ‘Diaoyutai’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC, 1970). According to Kawashima, at this stage the name change was not motivated by a desire to claim territorial sovereignty over the islands, but meant to help in Taiwan’s assertion of its developmental rights (2013, pp. 130–131). Accordingly, the ROC awarded the oil prospecting rights in the area to a US company in April 1970. This decision, however, turned into a full-blown diplomatic dispute a few months later, when Japan’s foreign minister disputed Taiwan’s developmental rights on the grounds that the islands are part of Japanese territory. Although not a state or KMT-owned newspaper, an editorial in the China Times, (August 13, 1970) criticised Japan for ‘repeating its historical mistake in pursuit of territory when it just recovered from [war] wounds,’ while insisting that the issue ‘matters greatly for our country’s sovereignty’.

In addition to the escalating dispute with Japan, throughout 1970 the KMT also came increasingly under pressure at other fronts. Internationally, there was mounting evidence of an imminent change in US policy, and in April the US ping-pong team landed in China upon an invitation by their Chinese counterpart. By the end of the year, the US no longer advocated the unconditional exclusion of the PRC from the UN and started favouring dual representation. This policy change arguably caused immense anxiety in Taiwan, ‘whose survival depended on nuances and definitions’ and above all on US support (Tucker, 2005, p. 120). The ROC military’s newspaper openly acknowledged that, due to the ‘spread of appeasement atmosphere’ in the international community, ‘our situation has become much more difficult than before’ (Youth Daily News, March 20, 1971).

Domestically, too, the KMT’s legitimacy was questioned. In September 1970 two graduate students from the National Taiwan University (NTU) published an article titled ‘Defend our Diaoyutai Islands!’ after a group of reporters from the China Times had landed on the islands and erected an ROC flag there, which was subsequently removed by the US Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (Bukh, 2020, pp. 132–133). The article made use of irredentism to justify China’s ownership and criticise Japan’s imperialist aggression,⁷ calling upon the ROC government to defend the nation’s dignity. It was the catalyst for the formation of the so-called ‘Bao-Diao movement’ which was founded by Taiwanese overseas students in the US in winter 1970. The movement galvanized students from the wider Chinese diaspora, including those from Hong Kong and second-generation Americans, and eventually spread back to Taiwan in April 1971, creating pressures on Taipei to demonstrate its ability to defend Chinese interests.⁸

Thus, during the 1960s Taiwan’s international status, as well as the legitimacy of the KMT, went from relatively secure to both internationally and domestically contested. In this context of waning international standing, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands presented an opportunity for the ROC to perform statehood and present itself as the defender of Chinese interests. In addition to being a threat to its sovereign self, the US’ policy change and the world’s increasing acceptance of the PRC was also felt as a misrecognition of the ROC’s identity as an anti-fascist and victorious World War II power. This is evident by the way Japan’s claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands were linked to its imperialist history. The fact that the KMT government pursued its economic interests and articulated the island dispute with Japan in the language of economic rights suggests, however, that the ROC’s initial anxieties were not of an existential sort. This does not mean that the KMT did not consider the islands as part of Taiwan, but that its economic interests took precedence at the time. Yet, by the end of the decade the ROC could no longer take its continued existence for granted. As a consequence, more voices framing the dispute in the language of sovereignty and linking it to the country’s dignity began to emerge.

Late-1970 to 1971: the tipping of the scale and the reframing of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as a matter of sovereignty

Before the Bao-Diao movement gained momentum, the ROC foreign ministry had been able to separate the territorial issue from the issue of resource development. In October-December 1970, tripartite meetings involving Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan had been held to discuss the joint development of undersea natural resources in East Asia (Central Daily, December 25, 1970). Attempting to drive a wedge between Taiwan and Japan (which then maintained bilateral diplomatic relations) and to appeal to the Chinese diaspora, the PRC’s The People’s Daily commented on the island dispute in December 1970, denouncing American and Japanese ‘reactionaries’ for plundering Chinese and North Korean undersea resources (December 4, 1970a; December 29, 1970b). Later, the forthcoming US reversion of Okinawa (along with the disputed islands) to Japan, and the Tokyo-Seoul-Taipei trilateral maritime cooperation, was narrated as another piece of evidence of American-cum-Japanese imperialist invasion of China, in which the KMT is complicit (People’s Daily, May 1, 1971). Yet, in another blow for Taiwan, the plans for joint economic development were suspended in early 1971 by the US and Japan, due to the increased international presence of the PRC.

Domestically, the Bao-Diao movement exerted pressure on Taipei again when the protests spread back to Taiwan. On the same day the Okinawa Reversion Agreement was signed, about one thousand NTU students demonstrated in front of the US and Japanese embassies, condemning the US–Japan agreement as the ‘repeat of imperialist “Munich” in Asia’ (Bukh, 2020, pp. 135–136). An implication of this unsettling analogy is that the ROC was compared to the betrayed and later occupied Czechoslovakia, raising the fear that the loss of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is but the first step on the way toward ROC dismemberment by other powers. Taipei’s anxiety at the time was evident in Ambassador Chou Shu-kai’s meeting with Nixon and US national security advisor Henry Kissinger. As Chou told his host, the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue ‘has to do with the protection of the Chinese Nationalist [KMT] interests. If Taiwan can[not] do that, then intellectuals and overseas Chinese will feel they must go to the other side [the PRC]’ (United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, 2006, p. 292).

Given these pressures from within the Chinese communities and without, the ROC’s claims with regard to the disputed islets became increasingly more forceful over the course of 1971, moving away from the language of developmental rights and towards assertions of territorial sovereignty. By April, Chiang (1971a) started describing the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as part of Taiwan Province in his diary (April 7, 1971). In June the ROC foreign ministry officially claimed sovereignty over the islets for the first time, announcing that the ROC ‘cannot—under any circumstances whatsoever—renounce territorial sovereignty over the islands’ and ‘that—for reasons of history, geography, usage, and legal principle—these islets are the territory of the Republic of China’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC, 1971). This represented a marked shift from the more conciliatory approach of the previous years.

Also from around this time, a public discourse emerged that framed the islands as unjustly stolen by Japan during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). In this context, the upcoming reversion of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands to Japan was framed as the ‘second Manchurian incident’ (Chunghwa Magazine, 1971) and utilised to confirm Japan’s supposedly fascist-militarist identity that required resistance and unity under the leadership of the ROC, which, unlike the PRC, was the only trust-worthy Chinese government with actual nationalist credentials (Youth Daily News, March 20, 1971). As an editorial of the KMT-owned Central Daily (April 22, 1971) put it: ‘The leaders and government of the ROC today are the leaders and government that led our nation’s soldiers and civilians to fight the long war of resistance [against Japan], defend national sovereignty, and abolish unequal treaties… With all the historical facts, compatriots of the entire nation must be able to rely upon [the ROC]!’. Thus, in an environment of waning international support and increasing acceptance for its Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rival, the KMT government used the dispute to reaffirm its legitimacy and to vie for the hearts and minds of the Chinese people by asserting the ROC’s statehood and anti-communist and anti-fascist identity.

We can interpret the developments in 1971 as the second phase in the derecognition process, where more states recognised the PRC rather than the ROC for the first time. Both Chinese governments used the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands issue to engage in a domestic legitimacy battle, yet it was increasingly the PRC that came out on top diplomatically. The suspension of the joint economic development of the Diaoyu/Senkaku area was a huge shock for Taiwan, given that it not only put the US’ support into question but also gave legitimacy to a (contested) state whose explicit policy was the ROC’s annihilation. To counter the resulting anxieties, the KMT became increasingly forceful in its articulation of the islands as part of Taiwan’s sovereign territory, thereby reaffirming its independent selfhood and statehood. The emergence of a discourse at this time of the islands as ‘stolen’ by Japan can be read in the same light, casting Japan’s claims as a violation of ROC sovereignty and autonomy, which needs to be rectified and for which Japan needs to be shamed. As its sovereign self came increasingly under threat, the KMT seemingly began to prioritise the pursuit of ontological security over material gains, so that the islands’ importance became primarily linked to ROC sovereignty and selfhood.

1971 and beyond: Taiwan’s derecognition and its lasting impact

Despite its efforts, the ROC could not prevent it being increasingly sidelined by the US and ultimately losing the legitimacy battle with the PRC. In July 1971, Kissinger made his first visit to Beijing to initiate US–PRC normalisation, a visit of which Taipei was informed only 30 minutes prior (Tucker, 2005, p. 125). Upon the receipt of Nixon’s apology letter, Chiang (1971b) was so furious that he described the former as a clown in his diary and refused to respond (July 16, 1971). Indeed, in the second half of 1971, ROC officials felt increasingly disrespected by their US counterparts, who had not only signaled approval of the PRC entering the UN as a permanent Security Council member, but who had also started to actively advocate for double representation of the PRC and ROC in the UN General Assembly (Wang, 2017). On the day Taipei was forced to accept Washington’s solution of yielding its Security Council seat to Beijing in order to remain in the General Assembly, Chiang (1971c) lamented in his diary that his foreign minister was told not to speak but just listen to the US ambassador (September 8, 1971).

This series of shocks was followed by Kissinger’s second visit to Beijing in October 1971, just days before the crucial vote on the question of China’s representation at the UN. The visit arguably facilitated the failure of the US’ proposal for dual representation, which preceded the passage of the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. The resolution did not only permit the PRC to represent China at the UN but also to ‘expel the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek’ (United Nations General Assembly, 1971), thus reducing the ROC mission to representatives of a non-state actor, denying its sovereign selfhood, and effectively concluding the derecognition process. Furthermore, the China seat in the Security Council, a symbol of the Allied Powers’ recognition of the ROC’s wartime sacrifice, was taken by the PRC, thus marking a further affront to the ROC’s dignity. In his open letter to ROC citizens following the UN fiasco, Chiang condemned not only the ‘self-destructive’ General Assembly that adopted the ‘illegal resolution’ but also ‘certain democratic countries’ which had assisted ‘Maoist Communist bandits’ (Chiang, 1971d). Knowing people in Taiwan were worried about what this might mean for the ROC’s future existence, Chiang assured them that ‘the ROC was an independent sovereign state whose exercise of sovereignty would never be affected by external interference’, and that, citing Sun Yat-sen, ‘the root of existence lies in the spirit of independence of the country and its citizens’ (ibid.).

It is only two months after its entry into the UN, on 30 December 1971, that the PRC issued the first official statement claiming the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as Chinese. When it did so, it effectively copied the legal argumentation that the ROC had put forth in June (Kawashima, 2013, p. 139) and also adopted the narrative framing of the islands as a territory usurped (竊佔 qiezhan) by Japan.⁹ The impact of this decision continues to reverberate to this day. Not only do the homepages of both PRC and ROC foreign ministries describe the dispute in this way, but it is also a narrative that appears frequently in diplomatic spats between the three claimants. For example, when commenting on the Japanese government’s move to purchase some of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islets from their private owner in 2012, President Ma Ying-jeou (also the KMT Chairman) insisted that ‘the fact that our country’s territory was usurped by Japan [in 1895] remains unchanged’ (ETtoday, September 12, 2012; emphasis added).¹⁰ Ma’s comments are not so much a conflation of the ROC’s history with that of the Qing’s (1636–1912), as a reminder that the former is the legitimate successor of the latter, which, as an autonomous state, is capable of initiating and continuing the dispute with Japan as a sovereign equal. Even though it is anachronistic, this rhetoric also serves to reaffirm the ROC’s identity as a WWII victor and defender of the postwar status quo, while casting Japan as a defeated fascist and potentially revisionist country which cannot be trusted.

Reconsidering the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute

The previous section has sought to highlight two points. First, that it was Taiwan, not mainland China, which was Japan’s main interlocutor at the time the dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands first emerged. And second, that the ROC’s loss of sovereignty and legitimacy battle with the PRC had a major impact on how the conflict was framed and ultimately developed. Specifically, it has traced how the value of the disputed islets for Taiwan changed from being primarily about resource exploitation to becoming a symbol of ROC statehood and a means to engage in bordering practices. By shifting the focus from identity to self, we were able to see how the challenging of its state personhood, in conjunction with the increasing willingness of the international community to admit the PRC into the club of sovereign states, constituted a severe ontological security threat as it quite literally challenged the existence of the ROC. Consequently, material interests were superseded by the more immediate need to reassert selfhood and sovereignty. This is not to suggest that Taiwan’s sovereign derecognition is the sole reason for the present-day Diaoyu/Senkaku imbroglio, since many factors have contributed to this arguably most contentious issue in contemporary Sino-Japanese relations. However, Taiwan’s unique international situation during the formation of the dispute is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects and one that continues to shape the conflict to this day.

Most importantly, and recalling the relational nature of ontological security-seeking, the formative years of the conflict continue to underpin a complicated trilateral relationship. Not only did the ROC’s gradual loss of international standing link the islands to ‘Chinese’ sovereignty in the first place (thus making potential resource sharing agreements more difficult), but this same framing means that the PRC’s ontological security, too, continues to be undermined by Japanese ownership of the islands, precisely because it won the legitimacy battle with the ROC. The PRC effectively inherited the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute with Japan from the ROC. The fact that the PRC initially shelved the dispute with Japan in the 1970s during negotiations leading to diplomatic normalisation and the subsequent Treaty of Peace and Friendship (Jie, 2021, p. 13) indicates that it, too, prioritised securing support for its sovereignty at a time when it was not fully recognised by major countries.

Additionally, in the process of trying to reassert its sovereign personhood, a discourse emerged in the ROC which constructed the islands as ‘usurped territory’ stolen by Japan. While this narrative can be read as a way for Taiwan to emphasise its previous ownership and thus autonomous self, it also had the effect of reiterating the ROC’s particular identity as a fascist-defeating victorious power. This narrative, too, is today a regular feature of PRC rhetoric even though it was not the CCP which led the fight against Japanese imperialism. For example, in response to then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013, the PRC ambassador to the UN commented that ‘Abe’s homage to those fascist war criminals [is] nothing less than a challenge to the victorious outcome of the war against fascism and a challenge to the postwar international order’ (Japan Times, January 1, 2014). Likewise, the top PRC diplomat to the UK dubbed Japan as ‘Lord Voldemort’, claiming that the shrine visit ‘raises serious questions about attitudes in Japan and its record of militarism, aggression and colonial rule’ (Liu, 2014). These accusations, in turn, threaten Japan’s identity as a peaceful and reformed post-WWII power (Gustafsson, 2015), as well as a victim of WWII (Hwang & Frettingham, 2018), but they do not involve Japan’s legitimate being as a state. Consequently, Japan does not feel the need to reassert its sovereign personhood, but continues to respond to the ‘usurped territory’ narrative with the terra nullius argument, emphasising its identity as rational and law-abiding.

Even though its lack of sovereign recognition remains an unresolved issue, Taiwan’s democratisation since the late 1980s and the islanders’ subsequent change of national identity from ‘Chinese’ to ‘Taiwanese’ suggests that the ‘usurped territory’ narrative may no longer be a meaningful ontological security strategy for the ROC, at least domestically. Yet, constitutionally speaking the ROC remains a Chinese state and maintains its sovereignty claim to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands on the basis of Chinese irredentism, despite Japan’s status as the most popular foreign country in Taiwanese public opinion polls (Chen, B., 2014a, p. 111). Still, it can be observed that the democratised ROC no longer depends on the ‘real’ China competition to assert its domestic legitimacy. The distinction we introduced between self and identity highlights that Taiwan’s identity has undergone significant changes even as its sense of self as a sovereign entity has remained relatively stable. And while contemporary Taiwan’s identity as a democracy and constructive partner is frequently acknowledged by other members of the international community (Keegan & Churchman, 2022, p. 100), the ROC is still subject to the more ‘fundamental ontological insecurity’ (Grzybowski, 2022) that results from a lack of recognition as an equal member in the international society of states. Consequently, it remains sensitive to practices which imply its lack of equality and autonomy, such as being referred to as ‘Chinese Taipei’ within international organisations (Chiang & Chen, 2021) or excluded from them altogether (Chen & Cohen, 2020), as these indicate a denial of its selfhood.

By contrast, despite being a fully recognised sovereign state, the PRC’s legitimacy to a large extent still rests on its claim that it has succeeded the ROC. This not only makes it clear why the dispute is about more than material or strategic interests, but also explains why the PRC is unable to easily compromise on the ROC-initiated islands dispute. In other words, any attempt at solving the dispute with Japan cannot ignore past and present PRC–ROC relations as it remains linked to an inter-Chinese competition over being the ‘true’ defender of Chinese interest. An implication that follows is that any solution to the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute might very well depend on a solution to the Taiwan issue, or at least on the PRC filling its sovereign self with different identity content. Admittedly, neither one of these scenarios is likely at the moment, given that Beijing is doubling down on efforts to spread the ‘stolen’ narrative internationally (Nakano, 2016, p. 177) and continues to negate the ROC’s self as a sovereign state, which is tantamount to the ROC’s ontological death.

Conclusion

The dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is conventionally analysed in the context of Japan–PRC bilateral relations. Yet, such a lens overlooks that Taiwan’s rivalry with mainland China was an important factor during the formation of the dispute, and that inter-Chinese dynamics continue to inform the conflict to this day. The ROC was not only the first to challenge Japanese claims to sovereignty over these islets, but it also articulated Chinese irredentist claims and provided many of the legal and moral arguments which the PRC continues to use today. Additionally, it was also the ROC which linked the dispute to Chinese autonomy and China’s victory over fascism by framing the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as ‘usurped’ by Japan—a narrative that constructs Japan as a remorseless fascist-cum-militarist power and still features in spats between Japan and the PRC. In this way, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute is not only part of a Sino-Japanese struggle over identity and regional preponderance, but also the result of an inter-Chinese competition over sovereignty and claims to be being the ‘true’ China. Taiwan is not simply another claimant state as much of the extant literature would have it, but also an important reference point for the PRC vis-à-vis which it has to perform its own sovereign selfhood.

In making this argument, this article has drawn on OSS to foreground the relational dynamics of ontological security-seeking. In the process, it has sought to contribute to the ontological security literature by addressing one of its shortcomings, the conflation of ‘self’ and ‘identity’. Making an analytical distinction between the two concepts is useful, because it enables us to see previously overlooked aspects such as the importance of sovereignty for states’ ontological security. When the international community increasingly recognised the PRC, this was first and foremost a threat to the ROC’s self as an autonomous and ontologically equal sovereign state—a development that generated existential anxieties in the ROC, which it sought to alleviate via bordering practices. This is to be distinguished from a threat to its particular identity. While the ROC had no choice but to reaffirm its sovereign self, the identity of this self as a victorious WWII ally, which cast Japan as a state that has not learned from its past, was not a given and has indeed undergone some changes since then. In this way, assertions of sovereign selfhood and particular identities often go together, but are nonetheless distinct.

Future research could build on these insights and investigate whether the distinction between self and identity also provides a meaningful way to address another alleged shortcoming of OSS, namely the lack of nuance with which it treats the concept of anxiety (Berenskötter & Nymalm, 2021; Krickel-Choi, 2022b). In this article, we have suggested that the anxiety experienced by the ROC in the lead-up to its expulsion from the UN was of an utterly existential sort, whereas the anxiety experienced by Japan upon being labelled a fascist revisionary power is not nearly as severe, although it still has behavioural effects. This would imply that threats to the self generate different anxieties from threats to one’s identity.

Another question for future research pertains to the origin of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute itself, and relates to whether Taiwan could have acted differently at the time when its domestic and international legitimacy was under so much pressure. The account here has highlighted the importance of sovereignty for states’ ontological security, which suggests that the ROC had to engage in some kind of performance of statehood. In this context it is interesting to note that the PRC’s infamous nine-dash line, which encircles almost the entire South China Sea and constitutes another source of tension in the region, is also inherited from the ROC, which drew it during its struggles to affirm its statehood in the 1930s (Hayton, 2014). Thus, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute is not the first time that the ROC has resorted to these kinds of bordering practices to affirm its self. However, future research could look into Taiwan’s alternative options, and examine what actions it could have taken if it had not been presented with the ‘serendipitous’ opportunity of the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue. In retrospect, the issue would have evolved quite differently if the landing of China Times reporters did not take place or at least did not lead to the Bao-Diao movement. The ROC government might have been able to pursue the joint exploration option with its Japanese counterpart, enabling a less confrontational performance of statehood by engaging in international cooperation (Krickel-Choi et al., 2022). Investigating the ROC’s options at the time might not only help our understanding of the practices states engage in to pursue ontological security in general, but also generate new insights about the conflict itself and the dynamics that inform it.

Acknowledgements

Portions of this research appeared in Ryukoku University’s Afrasian Working Paper Series and an earlier draft of this article was presented at the 8^th European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) in July 2021. We thank all participants for their engagement and are especially indebted to Hannes Černy, Janis Grzybowski, Paul Richardson and Edyta Roszko for their helpful comments on that occasion. We also thank Karl Gustafsson, Michal Kolmaš and the two anonymous reviewers of The Pacific Review for their thoughtful feedback which has greatly improved this article.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Johan och Jakob Söderbergs stiftelse (The Johan and Jakob Söderberg Foundation) under Grant no. 61/16 and 1/17, as well as the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Nina C. Krickel-Choi

Nina C. Krickel-Choi is Ernst Mach Fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. Her research fields include international relations theory, critical security studies, and East Asian international relations. She has recently published with European Journal of International Relations, Journal of International Relations and Development, International Studies Review, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. She can be reached at <[email protected]>.

Ching-Chang Chen

Ching-Chang Chen is Professor and Head of the Department of Global Studies, Ryukoku University. His research fields include international relations theory, critical security studies, and East Asian international relations. He has recently published with Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Oxford Bibliographies, Third World Quarterly, and International Studies Perspectives. He can be reached at <[email protected]>.

Notes

1 The islets are called Diaoyutai Islands in Taiwan. For the sake of consistency, ‘Diaoyu’ is used when referring to the ROC/PRC claims.

2 Besides China, Japan, and Taiwan, there are also a number of non-state stakeholders, for example indigenous people in Taiwan (which was colonized by Japan from 1895–1945), and proponents of a reinstatement of an independent Ryukyu state, whose predecessor had existed on the Okinawan islands until their annexation by Japan in 1879 (Chen & Shimizu, 2019; Wang, 2021).

3 Founded in 1912, the ROC was a fragile state on the Chinese mainland until the KMT, its ruling party led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and escaped to Taiwan in 1949, then a former Japanese colony under the occupation of Chiang’s troops on behalf of the Allied Powers. Under US protection, the KMT reestablished the ROC in exile there, claiming that Taiwan is part of China and that the ROC is the internationally recognised state representing the entirety of the Chinese nation, which will eventually retake the mainland (Lin, 2016).

4 Note that our research (including the timeline of the emergence of the dispute) should not be read as supporting either claimant’s position on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands’ sovereignty.

5 The ‘One China Principle’ as articulated by the CCP states that there is only one China in the world, that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and the PRC is the sole legitimate government of China. The ROC later developed its own version of the ‘One China Principle’, meaning that dual recognition was unacceptable to both parties.

6 The exception to this is the United Kingdom, which had recognised Beijing as China’s legitimate government in 1950 in order to retain Hong Kong.

7 We follow Suganuma (2000, 10) who defines irredentism as ‘any state policy in any country that considers foreign-ruled territories as belonging to them’ on the basis of ‘historical, cultural, or ethnic reasons’.

8 While the ‘Bao-Diao’ was motivated by Chinese nationalism, it was not a monolithic movement. The right wing supported the ROC and was in favour of unification, whereas the left wing was critical of the KMT and supported a PRC-led unification. A third strand was more attentive to Taiwan’s own reformation, concerned with the well-being of workers, peasants, and minorities (Lin 2014).

9 Even then, the PRC did do somewhat reluctantly, since its priority was to secure international recognition not only from the UN, but also bilaterally from major countries such as Japan (Fukuda, 2013). A major diplomatic dispute with Japan was thus not in China’s interest at the time, but it also had to respond to domestic expectations generated by the Bao-Diao movement.

10 By this Ma meant that the pre-WWII status quo must be restored as stipulated by the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations. Whether the pre-1895 status quo supports the Chinese sovereignty claim is, however, debatable (Scoville, 2015).