Just when the rhetoric on both sides seemed to be fading, last week the People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper, ran a lengthy commentary penned by two academics challenging Japan’s sovereign rights to the Ryukyu island chain – not far from Taiwan and home to Okinawa prefecture, the administrative body of the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands directly […]
While ties between China and its neighbors have long been strained by territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Beijing’s policy has typically been one of self-restraint coupled with patient diplomacy. But when the Japanese government announced the purchase of the Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, from private citizens late last […]
photo: Suria In one of the biggest landslides in Japan’s electoral history, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Shinzo Abe surged back to power in Japan’s general election last Sunday – just three years after a devastating defeat. The LDP and its ally, the New Komeito Party (NKP), won a majority with control of […]