Think territory politically: the making and escalation of Beijing’s commitment to Sovereignize Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands

Abstract

In popular narratives, intellectual and media analysts believe the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan is a contestation for potential hydrocarbon reserves and other maritime rights which are per se divisible, but nationalism – particularly on China side – and relative power change between the two competing claimants make these territories increasingly indivisible and the dispute war-prone. Based on a review over People's Daily’s coverage of the disputes and other secondary information, this article reveals a different scenario by highlighting the political meanings of disputed territories for national cohesion and regime self-preservation. It finds, Beijing’s strategic moves in the disputes are influenced by its efforts at different occasions to de-legitimate Republic of China at Taiwan and defend its core interests – namely Taiwan and the "One-China" principle, to appease the patriotism in Hong Kong and facilitate the latter’s stable reversion to China in 1990s, and what is more, to rally popular support at home. In addition, Beijing’s Diaoyu/Senkaku strategy did not follow a carefully calculated path, but was mostly reactive to the contingencies and ultimately took shape through the incremental accumulation of previous policies and behaviours.

Keywords:

• Diaoyu/Senkaku Island dispute
• Japan–China relations
• nationalism
• Territorial dispute

Notes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Shih-Chi Yu, Rachel Odell, Meng Weizhan, Wang Ziyuan and Mr. Xiong Haoming for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 On China and Japan’s official positions on the dispute see, State Council Information Office. (2012). Whitepaper on Diaoyu Dao: An inherent territory of China, Retrieved from http://english.people.com.cn/90785/7960320.html; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. (2010). Recent developments in Japan-China relations: Basic facts on the Senkaku Islands and recent incident, Retrieved from http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/index.html.

2 For a historicla review of the dispute, see Downs & Saunders, 1998; Hafeez, 2015; Wiegand, 2009.

3 Around one third of articles containing the phrase “Diaoyu dao” in PD in 1970–1972 contains the phrase “朝鲜” (Chaoxian, North Korea). These news articles indicated China and North Korea’s policy coordination and joint stances on this event, particularly including reports on Pyongyang’s statements by its MFA and talks by its members of the politburo, ambassador to China all of which expressed North Korea’s support over China on June 22, June 26, June 29, July 12, 15, & 16, December 28, all in 1971.

4 SCMP is short for South China Morning Post in the remainder.

5 The frequency refers to number of articles in PD whose either the title or full text includes the phrase Diaoyudao (钓鱼岛) per year based on the dataset of Renmin Ribao Tuwen Shujuku (Image and Full-text Dataset of People’s Daily) 1946-2017, thanks to the access granted by University of Macau Library.

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Duan Xiaolin

Duan Xiaolin received his Ph.D in Public Policy from National University of Singapore, and now works as an Assistant Professor in International Relations at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. His research interests include Chinese foreign policy, East Asian security, and foreign policy analysis.