The US supported Japan in a territorial dispute with China

The dispute between Japan and China over the ownership of the Senkaku Islands has gone beyond a bilateral conflict. The United States became its third party - for the first time they openly supported Tokyo on the island issue. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington opposes any attempts to undermine Japanese sovereignty over the islands. In response, Beijing warned that in the issue of the islands, “the United States will not be able to abdicate its historical responsibility.” After which Chinese warships again entered Japanese waters.

Hillary Clinton's statement, indicating the Barack Obama administration's abandonment of the previous equidistance in the dispute between Japan and China, was made at the end of the week. At a press conference in Washington following negotiations with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, the Secretary of State spoke very clearly for the first time: the United States opposes “any unilateral action that undermines Japanese jurisdiction” over the Senkaku Islands (Chinese name for Diaoyu). Although Mrs. Clinton did not directly mention China, her statement was immediately interpreted as the harshest warning to Beijing yet by Washington, which is bound to Tokyo by the 1960 Strategic Cooperation and Security Treaty.

In Beijing, Hillary Clinton's words caused a storm of emotions. The government's mouthpiece, Xinhua, announced: "By supporting Tokyo in its dispute with Beijing, the United States has betrayed its previous intentions of neutrality." The Chinese Foreign Ministry also issued a separate extremely harsh statement. “The statements of the American side distort the facts, without distinguishing between truth and lies,” Qin Gang, director of the information and press department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, attacked Washington. He warned that “the United States will not be able to absolve itself of the historical responsibility it bears on the issue of the islands,” without specifying what Beijing believes it to be. “Diaoyu Island and the surrounding islets are undoubtedly territory that belongs to China, there is historical evidence and legal grounds for this. No one should doubt this,” the diplomat declared.

Although, after Hillary Clinton’s statement, the dispute over the ownership of the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu) looks like a “one versus two” confrontation, Beijing does not intend to back down. On Saturday, three Chinese patrol ships entered Japanese waters near the Senkaku Islands. In connection with the incident, the Japanese side immediately expressed an official protest to Beijing.

As Kommersant was told by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, before that, “in the period from September 11 to December 15, ships flying the flags of the People's Republic of China sailed in Japanese waters off the coast of the Senkakus almost every day, with the exception of days when terrible weather conditions caused by typhoons, some ships remained on Japanese territory for more than seven hours."

Until the end of the 19th century, the Senkakus were uninhabited, and in 1895 the Japanese authorities installed the first marker post on them and included them in their territory. After World War II, Japanese territory was defined by the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty. According to it, the Senkaku Islands came under US control and were again transferred to the jurisdiction of Tokyo 20 years later, in May 1972, as part of the US-Japanese agreement on the return of Okinawa.

While the Chinese side claims “historical evidence” that the islands belong to Beijing, Kommersant’s sources in Tokyo insist that there is “no trace that the islands were under the control of the Chinese Qing dynasty.” According to them, China began making claims to the Senkaku Islands in 1971, shortly after exploration began for rich hydrocarbon deposits off their coast.

Sergei Strokan

Islands without transfer rights