Kyodo: China No Longer Considers Kuril Islands "Territory Occupied by Russia"

Chinese President Xi Jinping did not support Japan's claims to the Kuril Islands during talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Japanese agency Kyodo News reported, citing a source in China.

According to him, during talks in Moscow in March, Xi Jinping told Putin that China "does not take sides" in the territorial dispute. Thus, the source noted, China has adopted a neutral position on this issue.

In recent decades, China has maintained the position that the four disputed islands belong to Japan. In 1964, Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared that China supported Japan's territorial claims and believed that Russia should return the Kurils. The Chinese government has maintained this position, although it has not publicly stated it in recent years. Maps in China show the disputed islands as "occupied by Russia," Kyodo notes.

The agency's interlocutors added that China's decision to change its position on the Kuril Islands could complicate the settlement of the dispute, since Russia "is unlikely to give in on this issue now" with China's support.

• The USSR annexed the Kuril Islands following World War II. In 1956, the Soviet Union signed a peace declaration with Japan, promising to return the islands of Shikotan and Habomai when the parties signed a peace treaty. Later, the Japanese authorities began to demand the return of all the islands, and the peace treaty was never signed.
• Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, Russian authorities stopped peace treaty talks with Japan, which joined Western sanctions. A month later, in April, the Japanese Foreign Ministry called the Kuril Islands “illegally occupied” territory for the first time since 2003.