ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the details of the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute and the respective competing claims and counter claims of Tokyo and Beijing. The Diaoyu/Senkaku islands affair has long been mired in high levels of nationalist rhetoric in both Japan and China. The Japanese formal claim to the islands dates to the turn of the twentieth century and is based on formal occupation after Tokyo's determination that the islands were then terra nullius: a legal concept that refers to a territory not ruled by a recognised state, which could be the consequence of no previous discovery and claim, or of the abandonment of a previous claim. Beijing and Tokyo now appear to be following an agreed-on protocol of patterned patrols around the disputed islands. Japanese officials argue that the Japanese cabinet decision annexing the islands occurred three months ahead of the Treaty of Shimonoseki and was unrelated thereto.
