The South China Sea dispute and East China Sea dispute is so damn ironic lol. Basically China is claiming the island much like how Japan is claiming the Senkaku islands. Japan is claiming the Senkaku when its like right in front of China's doorstep and China is doing the same thing to Philippines in South China Sea. Now the funny thing is that USA is supporting the aggressor in one dispute and the victim in the other (Japan for Senkaku and Philippine for South China). ROFL just shows that USA only cares about its own interests but always acts like the international police telling other people to follow international law aka American laws.
It would be really good if people actually had an idea of what they are talking about before voicing and opinion.
Chinese claims in the SCS is nothing like Japanese claims to the Diaoyu islands.
The Diaoyu islands, much like the SCS islands, were discovered by China in ancient times and claimed by China since. The Japanese annexed the islands during the first Sino-Japanese war, which was a war of aggression launched by Japan.
After Japan's defeat in WWII, it was ordered to return all territory it seized through acts of aggression, which it did. But for some nonsensical reason, the Dioayu islands were placed in administrative control of the Americans rather than the ROC, and for another even more nonsensical reason, they were 'returned' to Japan by the Americans when they returned Okinawa to the Japanese in the 1970s. At which point both China and Taiwan objected and reasserted their claims to the islands.
Western media keep harping on about how China only started to assert its claims to the Diaoyu islands since the 1970s as some pathetic attempt to weaken Chinese claims and make it look like China is only claim the islands recently. But the fact is, the dispute didn't exist until the 1970s since I don't think either the PRC or ROC even realised the Diaoyu islands were under American administrative control until the Americans transferred that control to the Japanese and the Japanese then started using that to claim ownership of the islands.
At best the Diaoyu islands came into Japanese control because of an administrative cockup, and at worst it was a calculated decision by the Americans to start building the first and second island chains as a means to contain China.
But no matter how you cut it, the Americans had no right to give away something that was never theirs, and the Japanese should never have accepted the Diaoyu islands given the way Japan first annexed the islands. Can anyone imagine Germany accepting Austria if it was offered by the Americans in the 1970s? The Diaoyu island dispute is just one of many examples that makes the Chinese extremely dubious that the Japanese feel any remorse for what they did in WWII other than being on the loosing side, which makes their carefully measured 'apologies' sound hallow and insincere.
As for the SCS islands, well again the Chinese can point to ancient navigational and territorial maps to show that they discovered those islands first and were using them as shelter for fishermen. That is one of the very few universally accepted ways in which a country could expand their territory peacefully.
All of the ASEAN claims can pretty much be boiled down as squatters rights, whereby they sneaked onto the islands, or in the case of the Philippines, intentionally grounded a ship on a coral reef, and tried to use that presence as a claim of ownership.
Needless to say, there is absolutely no such principle in international law. Neither has there ever been a precedent that proximity and distance has any impact at all on the strength of one's claim to territory.
America is supporting Japan and the likes of the Philippines to distract China and create a pretext for its Asian pivot. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it as far as America is concerned. They only care about what's best for American interests.
