Sovereignty of Japan's Okinawa Unsettled: China Paper

Beijing, May 8 (Jiji Press)--The sovereignty of Japan's Okinawa Prefecture remains unsettled, Chinese experts argued in an article in the People's Daily, the Communist Party of China's newspaper, on Wednesday. The article was published amid a feud between Japan and China over the Senkaku islands, part of the southernmost Japan prefecture. It is time to discuss the Ryukyu issue again, the experts, including a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in the article, referring to Okinawa's former name. They insisted that Ryukyu, together with Taiwan and some other East China Sea islands, was absorbed by Japan following the Japanese-Sino war in 1894-1895. At a regular press conference, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declined to state the Chinese government's view on the sovereignty of Okinawa. She only said the history of Okinawa has been a hot topic in the academic community for a long time. Hua also said the Senkaku islands, called Diaoyu in China, are not part of Okinawa but Chinese territory. At a news conference in Tokyo, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga described the argument that the issue of Okinawa's sovereignty is unresolved as absolute nonsense. END