An official Japanese map published 134 years ago doesn't include the Diaoyu Islands, indicating that the islands were not part of Japan's territory.

Zheng Hailin, a Chinese scholar who has studied in Japan, shows a map he got there which doesn't include the Diaoyu Islands. [Photo / Guangming Daily]

Zheng Hailin, a Chinese scholar, went to Japan to study history and international law in the 1990s and bought a Japanese Map there. The map was published in 1876 by Japan's Army Staff Bureau and doesn't have the Diaoyu Islands on it.

According to international law, a country's official map has legal effect over its territorial claims, and Zheng's map clearly denies all claims that the Diaoyu Islands are Japan's territory.

Zheng says that according to his studies, a Chinese book from 1403 is one of the first books to have documented the Diaoyu Islands. The islands were included as part of southeast China's Fujian province in 1562.

Evidence suggests that the Diaoyu Islands have been China's territory since ancient times, and China holds territorial sovereignty over them for discovering, naming and annexing these islands.

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