Fault Lines: Geopolitical Rivalry in the East China Sea

Historiography

Sengketa wilayah yang terjadi di Laut Cina Timur telah berdampak pada interaksi di Asia Timur Laut
antara Cina dan Jepang. Selain itu, dampak yang ditimbulkan oleh sengketa di Laut China Timur telah
terlihat pada sejumlah wilayah yang berinteraksi dengan hubungan bilateral ini. Fokus analisis sejarah
mengenai isu-isu sengketa Kepulauan Senkaku telah bervariasi selama bertahun-tahun. Para peneliti
awal mengarahkan pemeriksaan ilmiah mereka pada status hukum dan negosiasi berbagai klaim di
Kepulauan Senkaku.

Penelitian lebih lanjut pada tahun 1970-an dan 1980-an menyelidiki bagaimana perselisihan itu didorong
oleh persaingan atas kendali sumber daya ekonomi di Laut Cina Timur, dengan para sarjana meneliti
penambangan mineral tanah langka di dasar laut dan ekstraksi minyak. Sarjana mengevaluasi undang-
undang yang berdampak pada sengketa wilayah ini. Ketika perselisihan memasuki abad kedua puluh,
para sarjana kemudian menggambarkan konflik lebih bersifat nasionalis daripada ekonomi. Selain itu,
para ahli menganalisis aspek lain dari hubungan Tiongkok-Jepang yang mungkin berdampak pada isu ini.
Secara khusus, perkembangan militer China dan Jepang dikaji terkait dengan ketegangan China-Jepang
di Laut China Timur.

Metodologi

Analisis tulisan ini mengkaji sejarah Kepulauan Senkaku sejak tahun 1895 hingga saat ini. Dengan
menggunakan sumber-sumber akademis dan primer, paper ini akan dimulai dengan melihat sejarah
konflik yang berurutan dari awal pemerintahan Jepang pada tahun 1895. Era dalam sejarah perselisihan
yang akan dibahas adalah dari tahun 1895 hingga 1978, dari tahun 1978 sampai 1997, dan dari tahun
1997 sampai sekarang. Hal ini dilakukan untuk memberikan konteks historis terhadap sengketa tersebut,
khususnya dalam meletakkan dasar bagi sengketa Kepulauan Senkaku di era modern.

1895-1978

The Senkaku Islands contain 8 features in total, specifically holding five islands and three rocks.
These islands are located in the East China Sea near the PRC, Taiwan, and Japan. Specifically, the
Senkaku Islands are 170 kilometers northwest of the Japanese island of Ishigaki and 170 kilometers
north of Taiwan. Additionally, the islands are 330 kilometers southeast of the PRC, and 410
kilometers west of the Japanese island of Okinawa. The islands in the archipelago are not
particularly sizeable themselves. The largest island, Uotsuri or Diaoyu Dao, has an area of 2.3
kilometers and at its highest point is 383 meters above sea level.
The Senkaku Islands have a long and particularly tenuous history between PRC and Japan. The divisive
nature of the Senkaku Islands dispute is reflected in the territorial claims that PRC and Japan each have
for the islands. From the perspective of the PRC and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, the islands
have belonged to China since 1534, when the Ming Dynasty administered the islands.

However, the Japanese government articulates that the islands were unclaimed when initially
discovered and that presently, there is no dispute. Indeed, the Japanese government asserts that the
islands are Japanese territory, and that no dispute over the islands exists. However, the claims of the
PRC, ROC, and Japan regarding when which state controlled the Senkaku Islands similarly conflict with
the respective claims of each state involved. Rather, both the PRC and the ROC claim that the Senkaku
Islands were not gained by Japan until the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which concluded the
Sino-Japanese War in 1895. In this treaty, China relinquished a large quantity of its territory, including
“Formosa, together with all islands appertaining or belonging to the said island of Formosa.”50 This line
in the treaty is the lynchpin of the PRC and ROC’s argument to support their claims to the Senkaku
Islands, specifically on when they surrendered control of the islands to Japan. The Japanese government
states that although Japan has maintained control of the islands since 1895, the Senkaku Islands where
not obtained by conquest. Rather, the Japanese government maintains that they gained control of the
Senkaku Islands through use the principle of terra nullius, finding that the islands were unclaimed.
This status was disputed by China, claiming that since the Ming Dynasty then ruling China
administered the Senkaku Islands, that there was nothing to claim.

These discoveries prompted responses from communist government on the mainland of China and
the Guomindang led government of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. For instance, Taiwan’s
ambassador to the United States, Chou Shu- Kai, presented a memorandum detailing why the ROC
disputed Japan’s claims to the islands.58 Even Communist government of the mainland based
People’s Republic of China (PRC), despite its historic animosity to the Guomindang government in
Taipei, supported the ROC’s stance. To this end, the PRC, through its state operated Xinhua news
outlet, echoed that the Senkaku Islands belonged to Taiwan, and in turn the PRC itself. 59 This
pressure that was put forth extended beyond Japan itself. Indeed, the pressure exerted on the
United States by Chinese populations both in East Asia and in the United States helped force the
United States to adopt a neutral stance on the Senkaku Islands in 1971, even as they returned total
administration of the Senkaku Islands with the remaining Japanese home territories in the Ryukyu
Islands that were controlled by the United States armed forces. As will be noted later, this neutral
stance only regards the territorial dispute itself, since the Mutual Security Treaty that binds the
United States to protect Japanese territory in the event of war was extended to protect the Senkaku
Islands from aggressive actions.

With the spike in tensions regarding the Senkaku Islands, Japan and the PRC began multiple sets of
negotiations in order to resolve the territorial dispute. These negotiations came with the broader
negotiations between the PRC and Japan to normalize relations, culminating with a visit to the PRC
by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.61 The first set of negotiations began in 1972, but was
impeded by the fact that both sides could not forge a compromise. The negotiations were
complicated by the fact that at the outset of the year, the PRC reasserted its claim that the Senkaku
Islands were only transferred to Japan in 1895 after the defeat of the Qing Dynasty in the Sino-
Japanese War, and that the Senkaku Islands had belonged to China since the late Ming Dynasty.62
Both the PRC and Japan held to their respective positions throughout the negotiations. However,
during the negotiations, both the PRC and Japan realized they were not going to shift from their
positions.63 Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai decided to downplay the seriousness of the impasse by
pointing to the fact that the Senkaku Islands were rather miniscule in size, and the Chinese
government decided to put the resolution of the territorial dispute back for later years. However,
those future years would arrive much sooner than what was expected by the negotiators in 1972.

That future year for the next generation of diplomats to return to turned out to be 1978. Although
there was a desire to negotiate a more stable treaty, there were elements in the Japanese
government that sough to stop the signing of the treaty. The dispute over the islands escalated in
relation to the negotiations for the 1978 Sino-Japanese Treaty of Friendship. The anti-treaty LDP
members attempted to leverage the Senkaku Islands dispute to stop the ratification of the treaty.
This attempt to use the Senkaku Islands dispute gained a great amount of support even up to the
ruling cabinet, as Agriculture and Forestry Minister Nakagawa Ichiro supported the opposition to
the treaty and helped spearhead efforts to thwart the signing of the treaty. 65 Soon after these
public shows of displeasure by the LDP members opposed to the signing of the treaty, an incursion
of a flotilla of 140 Chinese fishing vessels, including some armed, departed several ports in the PRC
and entered the 12-mile territorial limits around the Senkaku Islands, which led to a decline in Sino-
Japanese relations after the flotilla departed four days later.66 Even as the flotilla of fishing vessels
still lingered in the environs of the Senkaku Islands, Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda elected
to continue forward with the negotiation and signing of the treaty. To this end, Fukuda enacted
stronger controls of how cabinet members should respond to the dispute in public, to the point of
positioning himself as the arbiter of how and what mentions of the Senkaku Islands territorial
dispute were made by his fellow cabinet members. These controls ultimately helped lead to the
resumption of negotiations between Japan and the PRC.

In scholarly accounts of the dispute under consideration, there is an evident disregard for the
overlapping layers of geographic significance. These layers reflect an overall assessment by Japanese
and Chinese authorities regarding the geostrategic interplay at hand, pertaining to matters beyond the
limited geographical confines of the islands themselves. As we will argue, these layers are vital to the
understanding of both countries´ views toward the dispute, for they connect to elements of overall
greater strategic importance. This frequent disregard for geography is not particular to analyses on this
dis- pute. Gray (2010: 78) posits that: “Geography, geopolitics, and geostrategy have long been out of
favour by Western scholars of international relations and strategic studies”, which perhaps explains this
analytical short sightedness. Fortunately, that is not so much the case for Japanese analysts.

Gray (1991) clarifies the importance of this dimension. The strategist (2010: 78) claims that “strategy
must always have geographical, and hence geopolitical and geostrategic, referents. Strategy is designed
from the standpoint of particular geopolitical and geostrategic interests. As a general rule, it is
composed on be- half of geopolitical units whose societies are encultured as products of histories that
have been shaped critically by geography.” Those geography-based interests and histories are essential
to a true appreciation of the stakes involved in this confrontation. Not surprisingly, for Japan this is more
than a dispute over a group of islands in the vicinity of Okinawa and Taiwan. In this regard, we have
identified five geographic referents at play here.

Dalam literatur ilmiah mengenai konflik ini, terhadap beberapa lapisan dalam aspek geografis yang tidak
sering diperhatikan. Lapisan-lapisan ini mencerminkan penilaian keseluruhan oleh otoritas Jepang dan
China mengenai interaksi geostrategis yang ada, yang berkaitan dengan hal-hal di luar batas geografis
pulau itu sendiri. Lapisan-lapisan ini sangat penting untuk memahami pandangan kedua negara
terhadap perselisihan, karena mereka terhubung dengan elemen-elemen yang secara strategis. Sering
mengabaikan geografi ini tidak khusus untuk analisis sengketa ini. Gray (2010: 78) berpendapat bahwa:
“Geografi, geopolitik, dan geostrategi telah lama tidak disukai oleh para ahli tentang hubungan
internasional dan studi strategis.”

Gray (1991) menjelaskan pentingnya dimensi ini. Ahli strategi (2010: 78) mengklaim bahwa “strategi
harus selalu memiliki referensi geografis, yang mengandung geopolitik dan geostrategis. Strategi
dibentuk dari sudut pandang kepentingan geopolitik dan geostrategis tertentu. Sebagai aturan umum,
itu terdiri dari setengah unit geopolitik yang masyarakatnya dibudayakan sebagai produk sejarah yang
telah dibentuk secara kritis oleh geografi.” Kepentingan berbasis-geografis juga penting untuk dibahas
demi mengapresiasi sejarah dalam konfrontasi ini.