The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has finally seen it fit to summon a representative of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei to hear its protest against Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's reconfirmation of sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and another tiny archipelago in the South China Sea.
The protest had to be filed because Taiwan claims sovereignty, along with the People's Republic of China (PRC), over those islands under whose waters are rich oil reserves.
However, we regret the Waichiaopu did not make a public announcement of Taiwan's protest.
It was posted as a news release only in Chinese on its Web site, as if it were afraid the whole world would know it took issue with the Philippines over the tiny islands, most of them mere coral reefs.
We regret all the more Taipei's silence over the issue of the Tiaoyutai (Fishermen's Platform) Islands, which the Japanese, who also claim sovereignty over them, call the Senkaku, or Steep Tower group. Incidentally, the PRC also claims sovereignty over the eight uninhabited islets, whose Romanized name is Diaoyutai.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is planning a visit to Beijing, roused China's ire just a couple of days ago by reconfirming Tokyo's virtual control of the Senkakus.
The Japanese have set up an unmanned light tower on the largest of the islets, and their coast guard cutters regularly patrol the seas around them. Moreover, they and the Chinese have agreed that waters 10 miles off the islands are off-limits to fishing, depriving fishermen of Yilan and Suao of their traditional fishing grounds.
President Ma Ying-jeou, an old Tiaoyutai warrior, has declared just once since his inauguration in May last year that the islands are part of the integral territory of the Republic of China.
He made the declaration when a Taiwan fishing boat sank off the Tiaoyutais after it had been rammed by a Japanese patrol vessel.
The foreign ministry didn't officially protest the Japanese ship's intrusion into Taiwan's territorial waters.
All indications are that Taiwan has tacitly renounced its sovereignty over the Tiaoyutais.
So far as China is concerned, however, sovereignty over not just the Tiaoyutais, but the whole Okinawa island chain still is a matter unsettled, at least officially.
The Chinese invaded the Liuchius or Ryukyus, which were finally renamed the Okinawas by the Japanese in 605 C.E. (Common Era), but the islands were not annexed.
Toward the close of the twelfth century, a new state was founded by Shunten. China obtained its suzerainty over the Liuchius in 1372, sending its first investiture mission to Shuri.1
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