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The Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands)
Uninhabited East China Sea islets administered by Japan and claimed by China and Taiwan
Five uninhabited islets and three barren rocks in the East China Sea, about 170 kilometers northeast of Taiwan and 410 kilometers west of Okinawa, have become a barometer of relations between Asia's two largest economies. Japan administers them as the Senkaku Islands, part of the city of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture, and says no sovereignty dispute exists. China claims them as the Diaoyu Islands, and Taiwan as the Tiaoyutai, attached to its Yilan County. Chinese coast guard ships now patrol the surrounding waters almost continuously, shadowed by Japanese vessels. The United States takes no position on sovereignty but says its security treaty with Japan covers territory under Japanese administration, including these islands.
The islands cover about 7 square kilometers in all. The largest, Uotsuri-shima, or Diaoyu Dao, has steep, forested slopes rising to several hundred meters and shelters an endemic mole and other rare species, while Kuba and Taisho lie farther to the east. There is no reliable fresh water, no harbor, and no permanent population: a Japanese bonito-processing settlement operated here around 1900 and was abandoned by about 1940. Japan restricts landings, and activists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan have occasionally tried to go ashore. The islands sit on the edge of the continental shelf above the Okinawa Trough, and a 1969 UN-sponsored survey suggesting petroleum deposits beneath the surrounding seabed sharpened interest in them.
Japan surveyed the islands and formally incorporated them in January 1895, saying they belonged to no state. China argues that they had long been Chinese, appear in Ming and Qing records, and were taken along with Taiwan in the war that ended that same year, so they should have been returned after 1945. Under US administration with Okinawa after the war, the islands reverted to Japan in 1972. China and Taiwan voiced their claims publicly in 1970 and 1971, after the seabed survey. In 2012 the Japanese government bought three of the islets from a private owner, setting off large protests in China and a sustained increase in Chinese patrols. Coast guard encounters near the islands continued through 2026, as China–Japan relations remained strained.