Passions aroused by island dispute in East Asia

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): While East Asia is rightly famed for its high economic growth rates, it is also a region wherein jingoism remains alive. East Asia should also be remembered for the fact that, amid all the economic achievements of Japan, China and Korea, small barren rocks continue to bitterly divide countries in the region.

A few months ago the jingoistic impasse was the barren rocks in the Sea of Japan, or the East Sea of Korea, which remain Takeshima to the Japanese even though, as Tokyo admits, they are occupied by the South Koreans. But the passions then aroused have been tame compared to the emotional fires now burning over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.

Already three privately-owned boats have set out to "liberate" the Diaoyutai (Diaoyu islands) from the man-made structures which the Japanese have placed upon what in their opinion are the Senkaku Islands.

On Sept. 22 a rusty Japanese-built freighter, the Kien Hwa No 2, flying, as a flag of convenience, the colors of Belize, sailed out of Hong Kong harbor bound for the East China Sea. On board was an ostensibly resolute band of 19 Hong Kong Chinese "patriots" representing the ambitiously named "Alliance of Worldwide Chinese For The Protection of the Diaoyu Islands," plus a group of 42 journalists.

The journalists are going in the hope that they will record for posterity the raising of the Chinese flag on one of the Diaoyu Islands. They also hope to film the lowering, or burning, of the Japanese flag, and the destruction of a makeshift "lighthouse" recently erected on the Senkaku Islands by an equally resolute band of Japanese "patriots" representing a rightist body called the Japan Youth Federation. Right-wing groups in Japan have gone out of their way to stress that the Senkakus are an inalienable part of Japan's sovereign territory.

On the same day, two smaller 20-metre boats left Keelung, a port in northern Taiwan, carrying 16 activists from both Taiwan and Hong Kong, including legislators from both places. They sailed under the banner of the "Action Committee in Defense Of The Diaoyu Islands" and were accompanied by two other boats of the same size carrying 30 journalists. No plans for destroying the lighthouse were announced by this group but presumably if they reach a Diaoyu island, they will raise the flag of the other China, the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Looking at the incident in terms of regional stability, the adventurers on the five ships could easily add an additional chill to Sino-Japanese relations and thus impact on the scheduled talks between Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen and his Japanese counterpart Yukihiko Ikeda in New York later this week.

If, as expected, ships of the Japanese maritime self-defense force (navy) or the Japanese maritime safety agency (coast guard) intercept the patriots and prevent them from proceeding to the Senkakus, then the activists and the journalists (most of whom have no pretensions to objectivity in the dispute, and indeed seem anxious to fan the patriotic flames) will have their example of "revived Japanese militarism" at work.

At the very worst, were something inadvertent to happen to the ships while they are in or near Japanese waters, the patriots on both sides could unleash a chain of emotional events, the full consequences of which are difficult to predict -- except that they could be profound.

Already, according to reports appearing in the Hong Kong press, there are clandestine "Protect Diaoyutai" groups springing up within China -- where the authorities have already gone to great lengths to prevent any anti-Japanese demonstrations taking place.

Last week marked the 65th anniversary of when Japan first invaded China by moving to occupy Manchuria in 1931. A heavy police presence in various Chinese cities -- both on university campuses as well as around the Japanese embassy and consulates in China -- saw to it that the anti-Japanese memories revived in the controlled press during the last few weeks did not spill over into demonstrations.

The two small 20-metre boats and the Kien Hwa No 2 -- plus the many more ships from Hong Kong and Taiwan which threaten to follow in their wake in the next few weeks -- will all remind China's communist leaders that the danger period for demonstrations is not yet over. Foreign minister Qian himself reportedly warned his colleagues in a recent secret internal speech of the potentially combustible situation: "The death or severe injury of a Hong Kong or Taiwan activist in waters near the (Diaoyu) islets could trigger the largest anti-Japanese movement in China in recent memory."

Even if the Japanese maritime self-defense force or maritime safety agency find some way to prevent intrusions into the Senkakus, the risk of a further unpredictable escalation is unlikely to disappear. Other patriotic groups in Hong Kong are planning to sail to the Diaoyutais. Taiwan patriots have similar plans. A group of Taiwanese ex-convicts have pledged themselves to the task of blowing up the offending lighthouse. Communist China, having given itself the task of unifying the motherland, can hardly sit idly by, while Hong Kong and Taiwan patriots do the unifying for them.

So how has it come about that the stability of the Chinese communist state and the prospects for Sino-Japanese cooperation rest on such haphazard foundations?

As far as the Japanese are concerned, the Senkakus have been part of the Ryukyu chain of islands (the main island of which is Okinawa) since 1881. The Japanese also base their ownership on a claim to original discovery -- the same kind of claim which the Chinese make for sovereignty over most of the islands in the South China Sea.

Whether the Chinese also claim original discovery in this case is not clear, but Beijing does take recourse in documents of the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century. A complicating factor is that the Ryukyu kings did pay tribute to both the Japanese and the Chinese monarchies.

The Chinese have also claimed, in the current controversy, that Japan took sovereignty over the Diaoyutai under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. Whether there was a specific reference to the Diaoyutais in the treaty has not been clarified. It was under that treaty that Japan took possession of Taiwan and the Pescadores islands. The Japanese occupied the Senkakus three months before the 1895 treaty was signed.

After World War II, when the United States still retained control of the Ryukyu Islands after Japan once again became a sovereign state, the U.S. Navy used two of the Senkakus as firing ranges. The islands were handed back to the Japanese when Okinawa reverted to Japanese sovereignty in 1972.

The Sino-Japanese dispute has arisen intermittently, often with great emotional intensity, ever since. In 1978, anxious for Japanese economic cooperation, and recognizing the intractable nature of the dispute, Deng Xiaoping suggested that finding a solution should be left to the next generation.

Judging by the passions aroused recently, particularly on the Chinese side in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where people are free to express themselves, the next generation will not comply.

The Japanese rightists got the 1996 ball rolling when they not only erected a rickety metal lighthouse on one of the Senkaku islands in July but, in an additional provocation to the Chinese, returned in September to repair the lighthouse after it was damaged by a typhoon. Toyohisa Etoh, president of the Japan Youth Federation announced that his organization would return if the structure is damaged again -- and applied to the maritime safety agency for official recognition of the automatic lighthouse.

The Japanese Youth Federation claims that it first erected a lighthouse in the Senkakus in 1978 just as the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty was signed, with no Chinese reaction. This time, friendship and peace have seemed absent as Taiwan and Hong Kong have reacted fiercely.

Precisely why the response has been so much more vitriolic on this occasion is hard to fathom. The 65th anniversary has certainly had something to do with it. The verbal campaign against Japanese militarism in the Chinese communist press has had a great impact on patriots in Hong Kong anxious to prove their loyalty prior to Hong Kong's reversion to China next year.

Above all, adverse memories of World War II refuse to die. Leading Japanese politicians continue to promote East Asian discord with their unacceptable renditions of history -- only last week former Liberal Democratic Party Speaker Yoshio Sakurauchi insisted that the Nanking Massacre never happened in 1937.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's recent visit to the Yasukuni Shrine (where Japanese war criminals are enshrined) added fuel to the Chinese fire. So too did the Japanese government's reluctance to control the rightists' freelance activities in the uninhabited Senkakus.

A crucial factor so far in Sino-Japanese relations has been the Chinese government's ability to prevent any agitation arising. The compatriots in Hong Kong and Taiwan, with their demonstrations and petitions, could undermine this achievement.

The severity of the present crisis can be judged from this thought: if China was as free a society as Taiwan or Hong Kong, an aroused public opinion in China would today be pushing the Chinese government in Beijing inexorably toward war over those barren rocks.