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Opinion | Diaoyu Islands dispute can be laid to rest if China and Japan accept joint sovereignty
- Andrei Lungu says the dispute over the islands is more about nationalism than practical reasons and has haunted relations between the two countries for too long
- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, having both consolidated their positions, are the right people to put the issue to bed
Reading Time:4 minutes
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Forty years ago, Deng Xiaoping visited Tokyo, as the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China was coming into force. There, Deng addressed the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, articulating his famous idea that the issue should be shelved, because “the people of our generation don't have sufficient wisdom to settle this discussion, but the people of the next generation will probably be wiser than us. At that time, a solution that everyone can agree on will probably be found.”
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Since then, this issue has remained shelved, but it has occasionally flared up, threatening to upend Sino-Japanese relations. In these four decades, no generation has proved any wiser.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has finally paid an official visit to China, almost six years after returning to the Kantei. But this is not Abe’s first visit to China as prime minister. In 2006, just two weeks after first becoming prime minister, Abe visited Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping has also visited Tokyo in 2009, less than two years after becoming vice-president of China. So why did it take so long for Abe or Xi to visit each other?
As much as Deng wanted to set the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue aside, so it wouldn’t affect political and economic relations between China and Japan, there was too much political passion on both sides to isolate the dispute from broader relations. The 2012 crisis, with massive protests in China that followed the Japanese government’s decision to acquire some of the islands from their private owners, froze bilateral relations for almost six years.
If Abe and Xi are serious about fixing Sino-Japanese ties, then it’s time to finally settle the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue, once and for all. Keeping it shelved means just bottling up tensions until they boil over and wreck bilateral relations again. These relations will never be put on a solid footing as long as they are haunted by this dispute.
Watch: Diaoyu protests rage on in Hong Kong in 2012
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