Beijing should reconsider its South China Sea claims
Mike Rowse says Hong Kong has an interest in a resolution of the impasse
Now that the embarrassing Philippine hostage saga has finally been put to rest, perhaps we could take a look at another foreign policy issue that could affect Hong Kong.
The situation with respect to the Diaoyu Islands is pretty well understood locally. In broad terms, they have been widely regarded as Chinese territory since the 14th century. They came under Japanese administration only after the first Sino-Japanese war and the subsequent Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
After the second world war, they were overseen by the United States and treated as part of the Ryukyu Islands. In 1972, the entire group of islands was handed back to Japan.
The Chinese case for ownership of the Diaoyu Islands seems strong in moral terms given this history. Many ordinary citizens in Hong Kong have demonstrated accordingly and some have even sailed to the islands and landed as an expression of Chinese sovereignty.
However, there is not the same degree of understanding locally about the disputes with other countries concerning various reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
For example, the Paracel Islands are roughly equidistant from China, which calls them the Xisha Islands, and Vietnam, which knows them as the Hoang Sa Islands.