The Japanese authorities have decided to deport the Chinese activists who carried out the rally on the Senkaku Islands. The archipelago is the subject of a territorial dispute between China and Japan.
The Senkaku Archipelago, or as the Chinese call it Diaoyutai, ceded to Japan in 1895 as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. At the end of World War II, it came under the jurisdiction of the United States, which returned them to Japan in 1970. China does not agree with this, since there is a 1943 Cairo Declaration signed by Britain, China and the United States. In it, the allies pledged to undertake joint efforts in the war with Japan until its complete surrender. The expulsion of Japan from all the territories it conquered was also declared there.
Until recently, the question was in the air and very few people were interested, but in 1999 natural gas was found on the archipelago, the reserves of which are estimated at 200 billion cubic meters. Thus, the territorial dispute is now of great economic interest.
Chinese oil and gas company CNOOC has already started offshore development on the Chinese side of the line dividing the economic interests of the two countries. Official Tokyo protests, believing that gas is being pumped from a tank belonging to Japan. Chinese society is reacting more emotionally and aggressively to this dispute. In the country, there are pogroms of Japanese shops, anti-Japanese demonstrations, etc.
To commemorate the 67th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, 14 Chinese citizens decided to take a voyage to the controversial archipelago. As a result, they were detained by the Japanese Coast Guard. The charges of illegal entry into the territory of another state were rejected by the detainees during interrogations, explaining their actions by the fact that the Diaoyutai Islands belong to China.
A tense telephone conversation took place at the level of the deputy foreign ministers of the two countries, in which the Chinese side demanded the immediate release of its citizens. The Japanese did not fall into ambitions and at the government level decided to deport the Chinese.
