Five uninhabited islets and three rocks lie in the East China Sea between Okinawa, Taiwan and the Chinese coast. Japan, which administers them, calls them the Senkaku. China and Taiwan, which claim them, call them Diaoyu and Diaoyutai. Nobody lives there. Around them lie fishing grounds and possibly oil and gas, and they sit on the line of islands that separates China's navy from the open Pacific. Since 2012 Chinese government ships have sailed in the waters around them nearly every day of the year, and Japanese coast guard ships have shadowed them.
The wider rivalry and each side's full account: Japan and China.
Where it stands · September 2026
On 7 September 2026 Japan scrambled fighter jets after Chinese special mission aircraft flew over the East China Sea. On 10 September China Coast Guard patrols took place in the waters around the Diaoyu Islands. On 23 September Chinese special mission aircraft flew within Japan's air defense identification zone. The three events fall in one month and concern the same area: the airspace and waters around the islands, where the two coast guards and the two air forces operate.
What the dispute is about
Discovery or cession. Japan says it surveyed the islands for ten years, found them unclaimed and incorporated them in January 1895. China says they appear in Chinese records from the fifteenth century, belonged to Taiwan, and were taken along with it after the war Japan was then winning.
Whether there is a dispute. Japan's official position is that none exists. China says both governments agreed in the 1970s to set the question aside for a wiser generation, and that Japan broke that understanding in 2012.
Control by presence. Administration is what Japan has and China contests. Every patrol China makes inside the twelve-mile limit is meant to show that Japan's control is no longer exclusive.
