US Flyover in China-Japan Island Row: Will the Real Provocateur Please Stand Up?

• US flyover in China-Japan island row: Will the real provocateur please stand up? 
  by Nile Bowie, http://rt.com/ 
  Washington’s move to fly nuclear-capable bombers over China’s eastern air defense zone as a forceful endorsement of Japan’s claims over disputed islands is both needlessly confrontational and totally counterproductive.
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  The territorial dispute over  an uninhabited chain of islands in the East China Sea – referred  to as the Senkaku Islands by Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by  China – has been a highly contentious issue in Sino-Japanese  relations for decades, and the issue has resurfaced in recent  times as both sides assert their sovereignty over the  area.
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  Mass protests were seen in China targeting Japan’s embassy and  Japanese products, shops and restaurants when Tokyo’s far-right  former Governor Shintaro Ishihara called on Japan to use public  money to buy the islands from private Japanese owners in  2012.
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  The issue stirs passions in Chinese society because Tokyo’s  claims are seen as an extension of the brutal legacy of the  Japanese occupation and a direct challenge to strong historical  evidence that has legitimized Chinese sovereignty over the area  since ancient times.
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  Moreover, the official stance of the government in Beijing is  that Japan’s invalid claims over the islands were facilitated and  legitimized by a backdoor-deal between Tokyo and Washington that  directly challenges international law and post-World War II  international treaties.
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  The right-wing government of Shinzo Abe in Japan has abandoned  the passive approach to the issue taken by previous governments  and has played on nationalist sentiments by asserting Tokyo’s  firm position over the islands, which are internationally  administered by Japan.
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  Chinese and Korean societies see Abe’s administration as  whitewashing Japan’s history as a ruthless occupier and imperial  power, and have lodged angry protests over his calls to revise  Japan’s 1995 war apology and amend Article 9 of its pacifist  constitution, which forbids Japan from having a standing army.  China’s recent moves to introduce an air defense zone over the  disputed islands have come as a response to months of aggressive  Japanese military exercises in the area.
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  Beijing has denounced the presence of the Japanese navy in the  region and Japan’s numerous threats to fire warning shots against  Chinese planes that violate Japan’s air defense zone, which  defiantly stretches only 130km from China’s mainland and includes  the disputed islands. In addition to claims by Taiwan, both China  and Japan have strengthened their rights over the islands due to  significant oil and mineral resources that have yet to be  exploited there.
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  Let history be the judge
  Given legacies of both China and Japan as neighboring  civilizations that morphed in modern nation-states, ancient  history is sewn into conflicts like the Senkaku-Diaoyu dispute.  The earliest historical records of the island being under China’s  maritime jurisdiction date back to 1403 in texts prepared by  imperial envoys of the Ming Dynasty; during the Qing Dynasty, the  islands were placed under the jurisdiction of the local  government of Taiwan province. Maps published throughout the  1800s in France, Britain, and the United States all recognize the  Diaoyu Islands as a territory of China.
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  Japan eventually defeated the Qing Dynasty in the late 1800s  during its expansionary campaigns in the region and strong-armed  China into signing the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki that  officially ceded Taiwan and surrounding islands, including the  Diaoyu, which the Japanese renamed to ‘Senkaku Islands’ in  1900. Following the defeat and surrender of Japan in World War  II, international treaties such as the Cairo Declaration and the  Potsdam Proclamation legally returned all territories stolen by  Japan to pre-revolutionary China.
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  Beijing accuses US forces in post-war Japan of unilaterally and  arbitrarily expanding its jurisdiction to include the Diaoyu  Islands shortly after the Chinese revolution in the early 1950s,  which were ‘returned’ to Japan in the 1970s in the Okinawa  Reversion Agreement, a move condemned by China and the US-allied  Taiwan authorities. 
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