International law provisions

The Diaoyu Island Chain which Japan has stolen from China is in no way "unclaimed land".

The view taken by the Japanese government, which holds that the islands are "land without prior claim" and are Japan's "inherent territory" because it first occupied them, has no historical or legal basis.

"Inherency" means something inherent, but not belonging to others. In fact, however, Diaoyu Islands were illegally taken from China by the Japanese Empire. Therefore, the claim of "inherent ownership" is totally out of the question.

The Japanese government argues that various on-the-spot investigations conducted by the Okinawa prefectural authorities after the 18th year of Meiji (1885) not only found that the island chain was uninhabited, but also confirmed that there were no markers which would have indicated the rule of the government of China's Qing Dynasty. Japan then made a decision on January 14 in the 28th year of Meiji (1895) to erect stakes on the islands and formally included them in Japanese territory.

However, numerous historical facts, as mentioned above, fully demonstrate that the Japanese government's statement is sheer nonsense.

Firstly, the chain was no longer "unclaimed" as early as the Ming Dynasty and was included in the coastal defense area subject to the sovereignty of the Ming government. The islands remained uninhabited for so long because of their forbidding environment. But this lack of habitation did not mean the islands were unclaimed. Moreover, China was the first country which discovered, named, recorded, used, governed and defended them and included them in historical maps.

Secondly, Japan was well aware of the above facts as early as 10 years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. The fact is that Japan surreptitiously seized, rather than originally occupied, the Diaoyu Chain because its decision to put the islets under the jurisdiction of Okinawa-Ken and erect stakes there was carried out secretly. The decision was not made public even afterwards, nor did a single word about the Diaoyu Island Chain, or "Senkaku retto" in Japanese, appear in then Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirofumi's Order on the Establishment of Counties Under Okinawa-Ken, issued on March 5, 1896.

Neither treaties nor agreements between the United States and Japan have any legal effect in determining the territorial ownership of Diaoyu Islands.

The Japanese government alleges that the San Francisco Treaty did not list the "Senkakus" in Article 2 as part of the territories Japan should surrender. In Article 3, the chain was placed under the United States administration. After the United States returned the trusteeship area to Japan, Tokyo claims, the islands naturally became part of Japanese territory, to which China had never raised any objection. This thus indicated that China did not regard the "Senkakus" (Diaoyu) as part of Taiwan. It was only when it became apparent that the continental shelf of East China Sea might be rich in oil that China proceeded to claim its sovereignty over the chain, according to the Japanese government.

This obviously goes against historical facts. The Cairo Declaration issued by China, the United States and Britain on December 1, 1943 clearly stipulated, "All the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu), shall be restored to China. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed." The Potsdam Proclamation, also signed by the same three countries on July 26, 1945 to urge the surrender of Japan, stressed, "The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine." Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation means that it readily surrendered all Chinese territories it seized, which naturally included the Diaoyu Island Chain attached to Taiwan.