The Diaoyu Islands, located in the East China Sea between China and Japan, appeared on China's map more than 600 years ago.
That is 400 years before Japan claimed discovery of the Diaoyu Islands in 1884.
In 1895, the government of the Qing Dynasty was forced to sign a treaty, under which China ceded the whole island of Taiwan and its surrounding islands to Japan.
After the Second World War, Japan was supposed to surrender its claim over Taiwan and the surrounding islands.
However, in 1951, Japan and the United States signed a treaty in San Francisco without the presence of China where they assigned the Diaoyu Islands to the Ryukyu zone which was under U.S control.
The then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai lodged a strong protest and said the Chinese government would never recognize the San Francisco Treaty.
Liu Yongjiang, deputy director of the Institute of International Relations of Tsinghua University, says Japan does not have actual control over the islands as it claimed:
"The so-called control is that the Japan Coast Guard patrols around the islands and the waters 22 km off the islands. In the 60's and 90's, the Coast Guard set up landmarks on the islands, while removed the landmarks left by Chinese fishermen."
Liu says the so-called control has no legal basis and fails to comply with international laws.
Currently, neither the Japanese nor the Chinese side have dispatched armed forces on the Islands.
Liu says the key to settling the dispute is to admit the facts in history.
"Currently, there is a rising tension among Japan's political parties. The right-wing parties use the dispute to stir up a nationalism sentiment without providing a full picture of what happened in the past. I believe that once the Japanese public get to know what actually happened in the past, they will come up with their own judgment."
For CRI, I'm Qizhi.
