China doesnt dispute Japans sovereignty over Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyu chain, a senior Chinese military official said, dismissing recent commentary on the matter by state-backed academics 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 general 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, saying there is no doubt about its sovereignty over the islands. In a Saturday interview on Nippon Television, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe noted the Peoples Daily article but said that despite all this, we are calling for dialogue. I hope China will understand our desire.
The issue had come amid ongoing tensions between Tokyo and Beijing over the sovereignty of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, which sit astride key shipping routes. This 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.
