The Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) are a territory of the Republic of China (ROC) “surreptitiously occupied” by Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Friday night.
In the statement, issued in response to the release of 14 pro-China activists who were arrested by Japanese coast guard officers on Wednesday after they landed on the islands to assert Chinese sovereignty, the ministry used the phrase “surreptitiously occupied” to describe the Diaoyutais.
“Regarding the appearance of the ROC flag [in the protest staged by the pro-China activists] on the Diaoyutai Islands of our territory surreptitiously occupied by Japan, we thought it conformed to our government’s territory contention,” it said.
Asked to elaborate yesterday, MOFA spokesperson Steve Hsia (夏季昌) said it could be the first time that the ministry explained the origins of the disputes with Japan over sovereignty over the Diaoyutais in such a “straightforward” way.
“It was a factual description of history,” Hsia said.
According to Hsia, the Japanese government had planned to place national boundary markers on the Diaoyutai Islands as early as 1885, and on Jan. 14, 1895, it approved a policy that allowed Okinawa Prefecture to erect national markers.
Hsia said that the Japanese government had postponed taking action since 1885 because it knew that the Diaoyutai Islands had been discovered, named and used by the Chinese, as shown by various Japanese documents obtained by historians, including Shaw Han-yi (邵漢儀), son of retired government official Shaw Yu-ming (邵玉銘).
Japan erected its boundary marker on the Diaoyutai Islands in 1968, he said.
During the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, in January 1895, Japan annexed the Diaoyutais, the ministry said.
In April 1895, Japan and China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which stipulated that China cedes the island of Taiwan to Japan, “together with all the islands appertaining or belonging to the said Island of Formosa [Taiwan],” it said.
In 1970, the US and Japan signed the Okinawa Reversion Treaty, which included the Diaoyutai Islands as part of Okinawa to be returned to Japanese rule.
Japan’s sovereignty claim over the territory was partly backed by the treaty, but the ministry disagreed.
“The treaty gives only administrative jurisdiction of the Diaoyutai Islands to Japan and has nothing to do with sovereignty,” Hsia said.
Since the 1970s, the Japanese government has claimed that “from 1885 on, surveys of the Senkaku Islands [the Japanese term for the Diaoyutais] have been repeatedly made by the Government of Japan through the agencies of Okinawa Prefecture,” Hsia said.
The Japanese government claimed that the islands had been uninhabited and showed no trace of having been under the control of the Qing Dynasty, the ministry said.
“The statement is historically inaccurate and can be refuted based on official Meiji documents from 1885 to 1895 stored in the various national archives of Japan,” it said.
‘NO EQUILIBRIUM’: Taiwan’s increased defense spending is a good step, but it needs to do more to have the ability to deter aggression from China, a senior US official said The US plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems — including mines, cruise missiles and drones — to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions said. Pursuing seven sales at once is a rare departure from years of precedent in which US military sales to Taiwan were spaced out and carefully calibrated to minimize tensions with Beijing. However, US President Donald Trump’s administration has this year become more aggressive with China, and the sales would land as relations between Beijing and Washington are at their lowest point in decades over accusations of spying, lingering trade tensions, disputes about the
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: Several of the PLA fighter jets that crossed the median line of the Strait came within 68km of Hsinchu, drawing warnings from Taiwan, the ministry said At least 18 Chinese military aircraft yesterday flew into the nation’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on the second day of a US delegation’s visit, the Ministry of National Defense said, adding that the military responded by deploying an air defense missile system to monitor their activities. A delegation led by US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment Keith Krach on Thursday started a three-day visit to Taiwan. The ministry from Thursday started publicizing the actions of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Taiwan’s ADIZ on its Web site and Twitter. According to ministry reports, 18 PLA aircraft
ON THEIR OWN: The KMT has decided not to participate as a party at this year’s forum, and if any members do go, they would not be representing the party, Alicia Wang said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday announced that it would not send a delegation “as a political party” to this year’s Straits Forum, after a Chinese TV program described the planned visit to the annual meeting as “suing for peace.” The 12th forum is scheduled to open in Xiamen, China, on Saturday. On Tuesday last week, the KMT announced that former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) would lead the party’s delegation to the forum, with KMT Secretary-General Lee Chien-lung (李乾龍) as deputy head. However, on Thursday last week, China Central Television’s (CCTV) Yangshipin (央視頻) program, hosted by Li Hong (李紅), included a headline
WORKING OVERTIME? NTU professor Lee Duu-jong denied that he had held a part-time position at a Chinese university or joined China’s Thousand Talents Program A candidate for the post of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) president yesterday dropped out of the race following a report questioning his links to Chinese academia and government programs. Lee Duu-jong (李篤中), a professor at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) chemical engineering department, was a member of China’s Changjiang Scholars’ Program in 2006 and was on the list of its Thousand Talents Program in 2017, a report by Chinese-language Mirror Media magazine said yesterday. The article said that Lee is suspected of having held a part-time job at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China and was the recipient
RSS