History as a Mirror: What Does the Demise of Ryukyu Mean for the Sino-Japanese Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands Dispute?

Abstract

The on-going dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands between China and Japan has often been ridiculed by observers as an unwise struggle for rocks. One must question, however, why so much significance has been attached to those “trivial specks” in the first place. This paper maintains that the seed of contemporary Sino-Japanese rivalry cannot be separated from the “expansion” of European international society, after which China and Japan came to be obsessed with sovereign independence and territorial integrity. Following the demise of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Qing Chinese officials realised that Meiji Japan was no longer within the borders of a once-shared civilisation, which prepared the ground for a series of violent conflicts between them, unusual in their millennium-old, largely peaceful interactions. A sustainable resolution of the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue, then, should move from calls for putting aside sovereignty differences towards a more inclusive, postWestphalian bordering practice in East Asia.

Keywords

• Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, international society, non-Western international relations, Ryukyu, Sino-Japanese relations, territorial dispute

References

1. Surnames precede given names for all East Asian individuals in the main text. Portions of this research had appeared in a 2011 symposium proceedings edited by the Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University, Japan. Special thanks go to Pınar Bilgin and L.H.M. Ling for their warm invitation to the SAM conference in Ankara, and to Hitomi Koyama, L.H.M. Ling and Ming Wan for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. The author also would like to acknowledge generous financial support from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University Academic Research Subsidy.
2. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966, p. 124.
3. For an alternative interpretation of the incident as Japan’s strategic outmanoeuvring over China, see, Linus Hagström, “Power Shift’ in East Asia? A Critical Reappraisal of Narratives on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Incident in 2010”, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn 2012), pp. 267-297.
4. The Sino-Japanese relationship was so tense that some media described the two countries as being on the brink of war. “Dangerous Shoal”, Economist, 19 January 2013.
5. At present China is Japan’s largest export destination, whereas Japan is China’s second largest trading partner and a major foreign investor.
6. The remarks come from Kurt Campbell, then-assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration, and an unnamed senior US military official, respectively. “Political Climates in Japan and China Ratchet Up Island Dispute”, Washington Post, 25 January 2013; “Protesting Too Much”, Economist, 22 September 2012.
7. Schelling’s Arms and Influence remains a classic. See also, Thomas J. Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011.
8. See, for example, Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995; Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011, pp. 186-188.

9. Qifu Guo, Wuwang guochi: Zaichuang huihaung (Never Forget National Humiliation: Recreating the Glory), Wuhan, Wuhan University Press, 1996, p. 126.
10. David C. Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute, New York, Columbia University Press, 2010.
11. Martin Wight, Power Politics, 2nd edition, Harmondsworth, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1979.
12. Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 234.
13. Shogo Suzuki, Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society, London, Routledge, 2009, pp. 34-35.
14. Buzan and Little, International Systems in World History, p. 234.
15. Takeshi Hamashita, Choko sisutemu to kindai Ajia (The Tribute System and Modern Asia), Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1997; Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, pp. 43-49.
16. Recall Wight’s argument that all known states-systems emerged among peoples who considered themselves belonging to the same civilisation, which, in turn, differentiated them from other less “advanced” peoples. See, Martin Wight, Systems of States, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1977, chapter 1.
17. Douglas R. Howland, Borders of Chinese Civilization: Geography and History at Empire’s End, Durham, Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 13-15.
18. Ibid, p. 14. This seems to echo the Eliasian theme that civilisation is a process rather than a condition. See, Andrew Linklater, “Violence and Civilisation in the Western States- Systems”, paper presented at the symposium on, The English School Today: Order, Justice, and Multiculturalism, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, 26 March 2012.
19. Hamashita, Choko sisutemu to kindai Ajia, pp. 8-9.
20. Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, p. 155.
21. Non-Western IR Theory in Asia Reconsidered”, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 2011), pp. 1-23; and L.H.M. Ling, The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, Worldist International Relations, London, Routledge, 2013.
22. Hamashita, Choko sisutemu to kindai Ajia.
23. Regarding the consequences of institutional isomorphism and the internationalisation of norms, even conventional constructivists would agree that if states look alike it does not necessarily mean that they act alike. See, Michael Barnett, “Social Constructivism”, in John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 170.
24. The “1992 consensus” refers to a modus operandi under which Taipei neither openly challenges Beijing’s “One China Principle” (there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it) nor accepts the latter’s definition of China (PRC). As such, Chinese leaders would not have demanded the “1992 consensus” as the foundation of cross-Strait exchanges had their mind- set been fully and only under the influence of Westphalian norms.
25. Howland, Borders of Chinese Civilization, chapter 6.