Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Japan has Renamed Islands Disputed with China)

Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Japan has Renamed Islands Disputed with China

The Ishigaki Municipal Assembly (Southern Japan) has renamed an administrative area that includes a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea.
The assembly changed the name of the area containing the Senkaku Islands from “Tonoshiro” to “Tonoshiro Senkaku.” It was able to make the change, set to take effect on Oct. 1, as the area falls under Ishigaki’s administrative authority.

Japanese broadcaster NHK said the name had been changed to avoid administrative mistakes as another location in Ishigaki City was also called Tonoshiro.
Taiwan slammed the move after it was reported, saying it would “not be conducive to regional peace and stability.”
Renaming the town has been denounced by China as illegal and a "serious provocation".
Taiwan’s northeastern county of Yilan has adopted a proposal to rename the islands from “Tiaoyutai” to “Toucheng Tiaoyutai,” to include the name of a local township.
China, which also claims sovereignty over the islands, calls them Diaoyu.

At the heart of the dispute are eight uninhabited islands and rocks in the East China Sea.
They have a total area of about 7 sq km and lie north-east of Taiwan, east of the Chinese mainland and south-west of Japan's southern-most prefecture, Okinawa.
The islands are controlled by Japan.
They matter because they are close to important shipping lanes, offer rich fishing grounds and lie near potential oil and gas reserves.
They are also in a strategically significant position, amid rising competition between the US and China for military primacy in the Asia-Pacific region.

Japan says it surveyed the islands for 10 years in the 19th Century and determined that they were uninhabited. On 14 January 1895 Japan erected a sovereignty marker and formally incorporated the islands into Japanese territory.
After World War Two, Japan renounced claims to a number of territories and islands including Taiwan in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco.
These islands, however, came under US trusteeship and were returned to Japan in 1971 under the Okinawa reversion deal.
Japan says China raised no objections to the San Francisco deal. And it says that it is only since the 1970s, when the issue of oil resources in the area emerged, that Chinese and Taiwanese authorities began pressing their claims.
China says that the islands have been part of its territory since ancient times, serving as important fishing grounds administered by the province of Taiwan.
Taiwan was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, after the SinoJapanese war.
When Taiwan was returned in the Treaty of San Francisco, China says the islands should have been returned too.

The nine-dash line area claimed by the Republic of China, later the People's Republic of China (PRC), which covers most of the South China Sea and overlaps with the exclusive economic zone claims of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Islands, reefs, banks and shoals in the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands, the Pratas Islands, Macclesfield Bank, Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands between the PRC, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and parts of the area also contested by Malaysia and the Philippines.
Maritime boundary in the waters north of the Natuna Islands between the PRC, Indonesia and Taiwan.
Maritime boundary off the coast of Palawan and Luzon between the PRC, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
Maritime boundary, land territory, and the islands of Sabah, including Ambalat, between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Maritime boundary and islands in the Luzon Strait between the PRC, the Philippines, and Taiwan.