ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the dispute cycles and their handling by the governments in Beijing and Tokyo from the early 1990s. The post-Cold War phase has witnessed the gradual rise in the element of symbolic 'usefulness' attached to the islands, seen as irrendenta by Beijing and as threatened national territory by Tokyo. Bilateral relations enjoyed temporary serenity in the early 1990s. According to some scholars, the 1990 lighthouse incident demonstrates how domestic groups can use the sovereignty issue to embarrass their own and other governments, playing a central role in driving the dispute beyond political leaders' control. In 2002, after Japanese media revealed that the central government had leased three of the islands from their private owner, Chinese authorities began to take a more permissive stance towards the grassroots Bao Diao activities. The islands were the focus of a major diplomatic row in 2010.
