China’s renewed casting of doubt about Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa is intended to create a handy tool for political pressure on Tokyo. The ambition isn’t to pursue sovereignty over the territory.
Beijing can apply the propaganda tool whenever disputes between the two countries arise. The low-cost tactic allows Beijing to stoke domestic nationalism; link Okinawa to China’s century of humiliation, a major line of propaganda; and indirectly pressure Japan over issues such as Taiwan and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.
Over the past decade, it has taken the form of coordinated state media campaigns that sometimes blur into disinformation, and increasingly blunt official statements rejecting the 1951 San Francisco Treaty, which established the legal basis for Japan’s post-war sovereignty, including the eventual administrative return of Okinawa from US control. There has also been a steady expansion of Ryukyu studies—revisiting the historical ties between China and the Ryukyu Kingdom—in Chinese universities.
The campaign has gained little traction in Okinawa itself, where local polls show that only around 3 percent of residents support full independence. Yet it works effectively in China by reinforcing nationalist sentiment and anti-Japanese framing.
In this increasingly sophisticated narrative, the modern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa is frequently substituted with ‘Ryukyu’, the historical archipelago kingdom that included the present-day island of Okinawa. This terminology serves to decouple the islands’ identity from the Japanese state, which is cast in Chinese historical discourse as a perennial aggressor. By presenting the Ryukyus as a dual victim of Japanese militarism and US imperialism, these narratives align the Okinawan experience with China’s own century of humiliation. Ryukyu is thus depicted as a former Chinese tributary, forcibly absorbed by Japan, devastated in World War II, and later returned to Tokyo through a United States-led arrangement portrayed as illegitimate.
The domestic function of this messaging is central. In this framing, Okinawa becomes a mirror: a society stripped of its language, autonomy and voice—what China itself might have become without Chinese Communist Party’s salvation. This narrative is politically safe, emotionally resonant, and effective at mobilising nationalist sentiment online.
Recent examples show how this narrative is activated. In late 2025, amid heightened Sino-Japanese friction, Chinese media and officials dramatically ramped up the visibility of the Ryukyu issue. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated its non-recognition of the Treaty of San Francisco, a stance amplified by viral marketing campaigns the following day. These campaigns frequently blurred fact and fiction, circulating videos that claimed Okinawans were calling to ‘return to China’. In reality, such sentiments are virtually non-existent within Okinawa itself. Analysis by US analytics company Meltwater showed that Chinese articles using terms including ‘Ryukyu’ and ‘independence’ surged roughly 20-fold compared with the previous year.
This pattern is familiar: whenever tensions escalate, Beijing plays the Ryukyu card. At the beginning, it was a secondary legal tool to bolster Beijing’s claims over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. However, it has since evolved into a standalone strategic agenda. This shift became evident after Japan’s 2012 nationalisation of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. In 2013, the People’s Daily openly suggested the Ryukyu question be ‘reconsidered’, while the Global Times outlined a phased strategy: first, legitimising claims through academia; second, amplifying them internationally; and finally, supporting ‘de-Japanisation’ forces within Okinawa should confrontation persist.
While attempts to influence the situation on the ground have had limited effect, the effort to legitimise these claims through academia has become a durable institutional reality. In recent years, Chinese universities have steadily expanded research centres and funding devoted to Ryukyu history. In 2025, a Ryukyu studies program at Fujian Normal University received national-level backing as part of a campaign to support ‘endangered disciplines.’ Global Times was explicit about the field’s strategic value, framing Ryukyu studies as extending beyond academia to help construct China’s discourse framework within a complex geopolitical landscape.
So far, none of this has shifted realities on the ground. Okinawa remains firmly part of Japan, and Beijing’s narrative has found little sympathy among the island’s locals or the Japanese public. The campaign is also unlikely to lead to near-term military action. Rather, it functions as a calibrated pressure point: the visibility of the issue is ramped up during periods of friction to signal diplomatic displeasure, then quietened, though never retracted, when the political climate requires stability.
For Beijing, the issue is a low-cost tool for agenda-setting that complicates Japan’s historical narrative and reinforces domestic nationalism without escalating to direct conflict. For Tokyo, the challenge is not a territorial grab but a weaponised narrative that can be reactivated whenever bilateral relations deteriorate. The Ryukyu card thus demonstrates that China sees history not as a grievance to be resolved, but as a permanent lever for strategic influence.