It is an indisputable fact that the
You li Riben tu jing, written by a Qing official and submitted in 1889 to the court (which approved and published it)--ahead of the Japanese cabinet decision to annex the Senkakus in 1895--recognizes the Senkakus as being Japanese territory.
In sections (a) to (d) above, I have reviewed several late Qing-era documents, which show that from the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Chinese government clearly recognized that the Senkakus were not part of its territory and that, one may surmise, it expressed tacit understanding of the fact that they formed part of the Ryukyu Islands.
Based on the arguments advanced in Part 3 of this paper, one can draw the following conclusions. One is that Qing-era documents contain no direct evidence that the Senkakus
became part of China during the Qing dynasty. While these documents do contain passages that can be taken to infer such a development, there are generally vague and metaphorical and can in no way be regarded as unequivocal proof. Nor is there conclusive evidence that the Senkakus were seen as being part of Taiwan--by the government or the people of China--at any time during the Qing dynasty. China has long history as a unified empire and, by nature, was very sensitive to its boundaries and outer limits. When acquiring new territory, therefore, it unfailingly issued regional annals to support those claims (such as for the northeastern region of Taiwan inhabited by the aboriginal Kavalan tribe in 1810 and for Orchid Island off Taiwan's southeastern coast.
But no Qing document exists for the Senkaku Islands. On the contrary, Ryukyu and Japanese literature and maps, as well as those of Western countries, dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries overwhelmingly suggest that the Senkakus were geographically regarded as part of the Ryukyu Islands.
Even when referring to only Chinese historical documents, therefore, one can definitively conclude that the Senkaku Islands were never part of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Nor were they seen as part of Taiwan, either by the Chinese government or the Chinese people (and they were certainly not geographically part of Taiwan).
Finally, one can safely conclude, at the very least, that the Senkaku Islands in 1895 (or more accurately, in 1885) were
terra nullius under international law. The reason I say "at the very least" is because in 1885, when Japan launched an official survey of the Senkakus, if any nation had a legal (and historical) claim on the islands, it was Japan, for it had annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom and had thus established legitimate prior occupation and effective control over the islands. This is a subject that I will deal with in a separate paper.
