Have China-Japan Relations Recovered From the Senkaku Nationalization?
Five years on, the relationship has regained some of its normal rhythm, but it’s a far cry from the pre-2012 status quo.
On September 11, 2012, Japan’s central government purchased three of the Senkaku Islands from their private owners. The move sparked a massive backlash from the Chinese government and public alike – China also claims the islands, which it calls the Diaoyus, though they are currently administered by Japan. In China, the islands are seen as one of the last vestiges of Imperial Japan’s aggression against China, which culminated in the bloody Sino-Japanese War from 1937-1945.
Japanese officials said they had been forced to nationalize the islands to forestall Tokyo’s ultranationalist mayor from purchasing them and causing serious trouble. China dismissed that explanation as a flimsy excuse for changing the status quo on a long-shelved dispute.
In the five years since, China-Japan relations have yet to recover.
The immediate aftermath of the nationalization was marked by ferocious anti-Japan protests in China, as well as an increase in the number of Chinese vessels entering into the contiguous zone and territorial sea of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The protests died down, but the regular incursions by Chinese Coast Guard vessels continue five years on. According to a July 2017 press release from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, beginning on September 14, 2012 (three days after the Japanese government’s purchase of the disputed islands) “Chinese government vessels started to enter Japan's contiguous zone almost daily, except on stormy days.” The trend has held steady for the past five years; a chart from Japan’s MOFA makes the change from the pre-September 2012 baseline immediately apparent.