The tussle between China, Japan and Taiwan over ownership of islands in the East China Sea spilled over into US newspapers on Friday, as the China Daily newspaper took out a double-page ad about the dispute.
A centerfold display in the New York Times — among the most expensive real estate in all of journalism — was devoted to the standoff, which has heightened bilateral tensions and reopened old wounds over World War II.
“Diaoyu Islands ... have been an inherent territory of China since ancient times, and China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands,” read the text of the newspaper advertisement purchased by the China Daily newspaper.
The ad pressed Beijing’s position that Japan had “grabbed” the islands and that they are the rightful property of China.
“China has opposed the backroom deals between the US” over the islands, read the text of the oversized advertisement, which also appeared in Friday’s Washington Post.
China for decades has demanded the return of the uninhabited islands — known as the Diaoyutais (釣魚台) in Chinese and the Senkakus in Japanese. Taiwan also claims the islands.
Beijing claims that Japan tricked China into signing a treaty which ceded the islands in 1895. Tokyo meanwhile maintains that its government began surveying the islands as early as 1885 and found them to be unoccupied and that there was “no trace of having been under the control of China.”
Ten years later, on Jan. 14, 1895, its Cabinet decided to erect a marker to formally incorporate the Senkaku Islands into Japanese territory, the foreign ministry says.
Tokyo maintains that China and Taiwan only began claiming the islands after 1970, once it became known that possible energy reserves are located in the seabed which surrounds the tiny outcrop of islets.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS