Defending the islands, defending the self: Taiwan, sovereignty and the origin of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute as ontological security-seeking/ Nina C. Krickel-Choi and Ching-Chang Chen

The dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is generally analysed as a Sino-Japanese competition over material and strategic interests, regional preponderance, and nationalistic symbolism. Yet, such explanations cannot fully explain the endurance of the conflict and overlook its origin in the period leading up to the UN’s derecognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty in 1971. Drawing on the concept of ontological security, defined as ‘security of the self’, we contend that it was the looming loss of its sovereign self that prompted Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC) to assert itself as the true defender of Chinese interests by laying claim to the islands. This caused anxiety in China (People’s Republic of China, PRC), which had to follow suit in order to secure its own sovereign self. China thus inherited the conflict with Japan when it took over the ‘true China’ mantle upon its entry to the UN in 1971.