China Escalating Territorial Disputes with Neighbors

By Dean Cheng
The Foundry
Heritage.org

Amidst all the regional concerns about North Korea, the Senkaku dispute between China and Japan has continued to fester. This past week, the situation has escalated, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry specifically stating that the Senkakus are a “core interest.” General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that the Chinese had used this term in his discussions with them as well.

In response to a question about whether the Diaoyu Dao (China’s name for the Senkakus) were a Chinese core interest, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying referred to the 2011 Chinese white paper on “peaceful development.” In the official transcript of her remarks she noted that “China has maintained that core interests include national sovereignty, national security, and territorial integrity. The Senkaku issue touches upon Chinese territorial sovereignty.” In the recording, however, she is much more emphatic: “The Diaoyu Dao issue touches upon the subject of Chinese territorial sovereignty. Of course it pertains to China’s core interests.”

As the Foreign Ministry spokesperson indicated, the Chinese use of the term core interest has generally been associated with issues of national sovereignty, especially those involving Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. Wavering on any of these issues raised the possibility of independence movements exploiting the moment to press for independence, with a clear impact on Chinese territorial control and national security calculations.

But the gravity of such issues also meant that the term core interest was not one loosely applied by Beijing. Until this statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not officially listed the Senkakus as a core interest, although state-run publications have previously published columns making such claims.

Most notably, in January 2012, People’s Daily, an official newspaper of the PRC, published a column stating that Japan’s claims to the Senkakus “were an overt attempt to harm China’s core interests.” In essence, the PRC was implying that territorial disputes involved Chinese core interests, leaving themselves diplomatic room to maneuver.

Over the past several years, however, the PRC has been pursuing an increasingly assertive stance on territorial issues, not only in the Senkakus, but also in the South China Sea and on the Sino–Indian border. In doing so, they are decreasing their room to maneuver and staking out positions that are antagonizing most of their neighbors simultaneously.

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