anon45
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China doesnt dispute Japans sovereignty over Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyu chain, a senior Chinese military official said, dismissing recent state-owned media commentary on the matter as scholarly musings.
Please be assured that Chinas position has not changed [on Japan's sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands], Lt. Gen. Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the Peoples Liberation Army, told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore, Sunday.
His comments come after the Chinese Communist Partys main propaganda organ, the Peoples Daily newspaper, questioned Tokyos historical claim on the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch southwest from Japans home islands toward Taiwan. The chain includes Okinawa, a piece of land key to the U.S. defense strategy in the Asia Pacific.
Scholars are free to put forward any ideas they want. It doesnt represent the views of the Chinese government, the general said in response to a question posed by a conference delegate.
Lt. Gen. Qi was the first senior Beijing official to affirm Japans sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands after the Peoples Daily published in May a lengthy commentary by scholars at a prominent state-run think tank that called for a reconsideration of unresolved historical questions over the status of the Ryukyu Islands, but stopped short of calling the chain a part of China.
The Japanese government has dismissed the commentary, which had come amid ongoing tensions between Tokyo and Beijing over the sovereignty of uninhabited islands west of Japan, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, which sit astride key shipping routes. The long-running territorial dispute was reignited after Japans government decided to purchase the islands from private owners in September 2012. China has since repeatedly sent maritime surveillance vessels and aircraft to the waters near the islands, testing Tokyos control.
The Peoples Daily is widely viewed as the most influential of Chinas party-backed newspapers, and is seen as a useful gauge of the leaderships sentiments on many domestic and international issues when read over extended periods of time.
But while Lt. Gen. Qi played down the significance of the Peoples Daily commentary, he also stressed that the issues over the Diaoyu Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and Okinawa are not the same.
He reiterated his governments claims over the islands it calls Diaoyu, and defended the deployment of Chinese naval and surveillance vessels to waters in the East China Sea and South China Sea that are claimed by Beijing.
The patrolling activity by Chinese warships is totally legitimate, Lt. Gen. Qi said. Its not controversial for us to be patrolling within our own territory.
Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, emerged as a key base of U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region after World War II, and it is a cornerstone of the longstanding U.S.-Japan security alliance. But the U.S. military has long faced local resistance from those who feel the island has shouldered too much of the burden for the U.S. presence in Japan. The U.S. and Japan have recently stressed the islands defensive role to local residents, citing rising tensions with China and North Korea and the role it has long played in U.S. regional defense strategy.
The islands were an independent kingdom for part of their history and a vassal state of both China and Japan during the 19th century, though Japanese and Chinese historians bicker over the details. They were formally annexed by Japan in the late 19th century.
China Affirms Japan Sovereignty Over Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands - Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com
Will HongWu hang the traitor general?!
