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the claims on the South China sea are patently ridiculous, but I don't think it can be compared with the senkaku islands. From what I've read China actually did
by Jack000 12y ago
the claims on the South China sea are patently ridiculous, but I don't think it can be compared with the senkaku islands. From what I've read China actually did have better claim over those islands prior to 1884 and immediately after WWII, but didn't assert those claims because well.. the islands were worthless. Now that they've found oil they want to roll back the clock.
I think there is a fundamental cultural difference in the way the west and China views the dispute. To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all. But to China it's just the latest in a series of conflicts with Japan going back hundreds of years.
- akfanta 12y ago> To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all Some say the genocide of the natives also helped a lot. These kind of logic just can't be applied to the problems in Asia, where the territory disputes trace back to hundreds of years ago. It's not a west vs east thing.
- GigabyteCoin 12y agoI believe the parent comment was talking about squatters rights[0], not how the US was conquered. [0] http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2013/12/13/you_can_still_lose_land_through_squatters_rights.html http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2013/12/13/...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago"To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all" You, uh, do realize that every piece of land in the US was found first by people who were already living there?
- scarmig 12y agoTechnically speaking, those same people didn't live there too long once colonizers and the US government arrived.
- mikeash 12y agoThat's the point he's making: if you occupy land for a century or so, we tend to consider it yours, regardless of what happened prior.
- Dylan16807 12y agoMultiple people can find something.
- BrandonMarc 12y agoIt helps that China has been around for, what, millenia? During the thousand(s) of years, you can probably find a century somewhere in there that they had/enforced a claim to most pieces of land, either owning outright or controlling access to.