Scholar's fantasy of a treaty

Claims in essay 'From San Francisco to the South China Sea' go against principles of international law and do not hold water

Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics from St. Andrew's University in Osaka, Japan, recently wrote an essay entitled "From San Francisco to the South China Sea", which has garnered wide attention. However, the opinions he expresses are beyond the bounds of common sense.

Matsumura says that in Article 2 of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced its sovereignty claims over the Nansha (Spratly) Islands and the Xisha (Paracel) Islands without reassigning them to any single country, thus, these islands remain legally under the collective custody of the other 48 state parties to the treaty, including the Philippines and Vietnam. Here the professor should be reminded that Vietnam denounced the San Francisco Peace Treaty in an announcement. China was never a signatory and has never recognized the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which Japan uses to try to justify not returning the Diaoyu Islands to China.