How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT *
This article traces the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu and Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and shows how a bilateral territorial question has widened into a regional and international one. The author follows the historical sequence from the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 through the wartime declarations that left the status of the islands unresolved, the United Nations report of 1969 indicating oil and gas deposits, the joint development agreement of 2008 and its subsequent collapse, the purchase of the islands in 2012 and the protests that followed, and the growing involvement of the United States, the Philippines and other states in the region. The article closes with a series of open questions about whether an international legal or institutional mechanism could resolve disputes of this kind.
KEYWORDS *
East China Sea, Diaoyu Senkaku Islands, China, Japan, territorial dispute, natural resources, UNCLOS, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, joint development, exclusive economic zone, South China Sea, escalation
INTRODUCTION
A centuries-old conflict between China and Japan about the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands seems to come to a head over the past few years. A conflict over territory and resources between two nations expands on a global scale and involves more and more parties.
The conflict in the East China Sea between Japan and China goes back more than 100 years. Basically, both nations claim rights about an area in the sea, which contains natural gas and oil fields. But as global conflicts are by nature, it is way more complex.
Throughout history, different countries were included in the dispute through territorial claims in order to gain power within that region, which has lots of natural gas and oil resources as well as includes the main trading passes. In the following, I will present the historical events briefly to give an overview of the conflict.
MAIN CORPUS
In 1895 the Sino-Japanese war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, in which China cedes territories to Japan. The Treaty didn’t specifically mention the islands mentioned above.
After the 2nd World War Japan had to give back all claims seized through war, which was stated within the declaration of Kairo in 1943 and the declaration of Potsdam in 1945. As it was not mentioned within the Treaty, to which country the two disputed islands belonged before, the affiliation is still not solved up to today. It got even tenser after a UN report stated in 1969 that there is a high probability of oil and gas resources in the disputed area.
China started to claim rights over the islands and the US intervened on Japan’s side, because of a US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty from 1960. The US took a neutral position in the whole conflict in order to normalize relations with China which hopes to end the Vietnam war. But they still played a role in the background by supporting ASEAN countries and Japan in order to hold their own stability within that region.
After years of several smaller military and civil incidents over the gas field, Japan and China finally signed a Joint Energy Development Agreement in 2008. It says that both countries agreed on exploring the fields jointly, which was a major step towards cooperation on the energy the resources.
Closely to a peaceful solution, in 2009 China began to build a rig unilaterally. Japan threatened to bring China to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the tensions arose again. Since the agreement was made little has been done to increase resource developments jointly.
On the contrary, over the last decade, the situation has become even tenser. The US took a greater part in it, the Philippines and other ASEAN countries got involved as well. Through the neighboring conflict in the South China Sea, it seemed nearly inevitable not to expand the heat from this dispute in the whole area.
After Japan purchased the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from a private owner in 2012 in order to protect their sovereignty, the largest Anti-Japanese protests happened in China since the 70s. The economy between China and Japan dropped immensely and both countries increased their military budgets again.
Soon Japan offered military aid for the conflict in the South China Sea towards the Philippines and China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone which requires all non-commercial air traffic to submit their flight plans prior to entering that area. If not, immediate military action would be performed.
After, the US signed a ten-year military pact with the Philippines in 2014, which is in conflict with China as well because of some other disputed islands, called the Spratly Islands.
In 2016 China snatched and later on returned a US Navy underwater drone. In 2018 the tensions increased even more after a Chinese and a US warship nearly collided. The US secretary canceled his trip to Beijing and Trump said, President Xi Jinping may not be a friend anymore.
SUMMARY
Since January 2019 more than 200 Chinese ships were seen near the island of the Philippines. What started to be a territorial conflict between two nations at the end of the 19th century is nowadays a global dispute about resources and trading passes in the Pacific. The conflict includes decisions from past wars like the 2nd World War and the Vietnam War and involves the current conflict in the South China Sea. It includes old and new Treaties and it includes way more interests than only from China and Japan.
CONCLUSION
As the border of the East China Sea and the South China Sea are close might there be a possibility of a conflict that spreads even further?
Or will there be an opportunity to find a solution? Would both conflict partners sit together and open up towards a possibility to solve the conflict? And which higher global authority could support the parties in solving the conflict? What could be the function of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS in this conflict?
Wouldn’t there be a possibility to fix by law, which regions belong to which country if the official 200 nautical miles from each coast is overlapping?
After so many countless years of experiences with conflicts about territories in human history, shouldn’t there be an official global institution that would have the function to solve a conflict like this?
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s closing questions have concrete answers, and they are more discouraging and more useful than they first appear.
An institution of the kind the author asks for already exists. The Law of the Sea Convention establishes rules for overlapping exclusive economic zones and provides three fora, the International Tribunal, the International Court of Justice and arbitral tribunals, for resolving the resulting disputes. Its limitation is structural: the Convention governs maritime zones generated by territory, not sovereignty over territory itself, so it cannot decide who owns the islands, only what maritime entitlements follow once that is settled. Both parties have also excluded sovereignty and boundary disputes from compulsory jurisdiction, as most coastal states have, which means neither can be brought before a tribunal without its consent. The 2016 arbitration concerning the South China Sea illustrates the further difficulty precisely: an award was issued, and the state that lost declined to accept it. Adjudication produces authoritative answers, but only enforceable ones where the parties want them.
That points toward the instrument this dispute has already used and abandoned. The joint development agreement of 2008 was the right structure for exactly the reason the article records: it allowed both parties to extract value from the seabed without either conceding sovereignty. Such arrangements have succeeded elsewhere, in the Timor Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the North Sea, and they work because they separate what is negotiable, revenue and access, from what is not, title. What defeated the Chinese and Japanese agreement was the absence of implementation machinery: no joint authority with defined powers, no agreed monitoring, no dispute procedure for the moment when one side acted alone. Reviving it with those components, and with an explicit clause that nothing done under it prejudices either sovereignty claim, is the most realistic route available.
Meanwhile the immediate risk is not litigation but collision. Fishing vessels, coast guards, warships and aircraft operate in close proximity around these features, and the incidents the article lists show how close the margin is. Crisis management arrangements are unglamorous and achievable: a maritime and air hotline that functions in real time, agreed protocols for encounters, notification of exercises, and joint fisheries and search and rescue cooperation. Such measures require no concession on the underlying claim and address the way this dispute is most likely to turn violent, which is by accident rather than by decision.
Two final observations. The domestic dimension deserves attention, because in both countries this issue mobilises nationalist sentiment that constrains leaders more than it directs them; agreements are therefore best negotiated quietly and announced as achievements rather than concessions, and joint historical and educational work, though slow, reduces the political cost of compromise over time. And the wider regional framework matters: a code of conduct binding all claimants in these waters, including the South China Sea parties the article mentions, would address what the author identifies as the real danger, namely that separate disputes merge into a single confrontation in which every incident anywhere raises the temperature everywhere.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
https://www.cfr.org/interactive/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/tensions-east-china-sea
https://www.cfr.org/interactives/chinas-maritime-disputes?cid=otr-marketing_use-china_sea_InfoGuide#!/chinas-maritime-disputes?cid=otr-marketing_use-china_sea_InfoGuide
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, Parts V, VI and XV.
Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895; Cairo Declaration, 1943; Potsdam Declaration, 1945; Treaty of San Francisco, 1951; Okinawa Reversion Agreement, 1971.
Agreement between Japan and China on the Joint Development of the East China Sea, 18 June 2008.
Permanent Court of Arbitration, The South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China), Award of 12 July 2016.
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, ASEAN and China, 2002, and negotiations on a Code of Conduct.
Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States, 1960.
Emmers, R. (2010). Geopolitics and Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia. Routledge, London.
An interesting and complicated conflict. This short work provides a good overview.