今天(2019/05/07)筆者自己有一些時間，同數偏有關釣魚島問題的文章，一起回顧這段稍微升高的緊張氣氛。

筆者在回這篇時，提出對當時馬英九政府的對領土問題的軟弱。馬英九政府追溯自明廷時，釣魚台列嶼就已經是中國的固有領土，日本政府殖民台灣的五十年間，釣魚台列嶼被劃為台灣總督府的一部份，馬英九使用這方面的所以「台灣屬島」，認定其為宜蘭縣管轄，但筆者覺得如此想法是和極綠選民比台獨或媚日之嫌有過之而無不及，馬英九又再一次「真愛台獨」，諷刺地和民進黨有競爭力地搶愛台灣的選票。而中國政府或輿論提及釣魚島是琉求王國的一部份，但很容易被誤認是已經隨著沖繩縣的確立而順便將釣魚島確立為尖閣群島。

若以中國大河史觀而言，釣魚島在清廷覆亡前，南洋艦隊僅有的四艘船艦（北洋艦隊已在甲午戰爭中覆沒），仍然有至釣魚島附近的紀錄，並和日艦驅趕過，中華民國建立後，國民政府主席林森曾於答覆美國商船海難問題時，和美國政府交涉的信中，順便感謝到美國以「中國屬地」稱呼「釣魚台列嶼」，即北京現稱的釣魚島及附近小島。所以釣魚島從來不因台灣或琉球王國被殖民而有主權上的變動。

China and Japan

Relations on the rocks

An outbreak of anti-Japanese protests unsettles China’s leaders at a sensitive time

Aug 25th 2012 | BEIJING | from the print edition

AS CHINA’S Communist Party prepares for the biggest shuffle of its leadership in a decade, officials frequently intone the need to create a “harmonious and stable social environment” in readiness for the occasion. On August 19th their tactics were put to the test when thousands of people took to the streets in protest against Japan. The party is not averse to bashing its old enemy, but a flare-up of anti-Japanese sentiment in China is causing anxiety.

The protests were triggered by a favourite cause of Chinese nationalists: a dispute with Japan over ownership of the Senkaku islands (or Diaoyu islands, as the Chinese call them) in the East China Sea. This has escalated recently, with tit-for-tat landings on the uninhabited rocks by activists from both sides, as well as a close approach by a group from Taiwan, where the issue is also touchy. Waters around the rocks are rich fishing-grounds and may cover deposits of oil and gas.

The protests were the biggest of their kind since anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005. China’s state-controlled media said about a dozen cities were affected. Some protesters said it was closer to 30. In the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders on Hong Kong, protesters broke the windows of Japanese restaurants and overturned several Japanese-branded cars, including a police vehicle which was also subjected to a battering. One of the biggest demonstrations occurred in the south-western city of Chengdu, where thousands of people marched through a business district and forced the closure of a Japanese department store.

Although China abhors demonstrations of any kind, it is likely that officials decided in this case to allow citizens to let off some steam. The party is nervous of becoming a target of nationalist wrath. It goes to great lengths to highlight its contribution to the defeat of Japan in the second world war and is quick to decry any perceived slight. In 2010, when the Japanese detained a Chinese fishing boat and its crew near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, China suspended exports to Japan of rare earths, an important commodity for high-tech industries, for two months.

Officials will be relieved that the protests were smaller in the country’s two most politically sensitive cities, Beijing and Shanghai. But leaders remain on edge. The coincidence of this latest outbreak with preparations for a five-yearly party congress in the autumn, after which the leadership changes will be announced, can only heighten their anxiety. Those jockeying for positions in the new line-up will not want to appear soft on Japan. But they will be especially fearful that nationalist unrest could turn against the party itself at a time of slowing economic growth and widespread public discontent over high-level wrongdoing (see article).

The rapid growth over the past couple of years of social media, especially Twitter-like microblogs, complicates the government’s efforts. They played a big role in the protests on August 19th. But they have also been a conduit for unusual debate about the dangers of unrestrained nationalism. Many internet users have echoed the official media’s criticism of the violence during the recent demonstrations, and ridiculed calls for a boycott of Japanese goods in a country awash with them. A poll on Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog service, asked whether there should be a boycott. More than half of over 50,000 respondents said no.

Tong Zeng, a veteran campaigner in Beijing on Japan-related causes, says the authorities fret too much. Most demonstrators are middle-class people, he says, who prefer to protest at weekends or on public holidays and eschew violence (he receives frequent calls from the police telling him to stay away altogether).

Soldiers have their say

A new voice is also being heard: that of the Chinese army. On the same day as the demonstrations, Global Times, an aggressively nationalist newspaper, organised a forum in Beijing to discuss the disputed islands. Among the speakers was Major-General Luo Yuan, a military academic whose suggestions included placing mines in surrounding waters, using the islands as a target for Chinese air-force bombing practice and naming China’s new aircraft-carrier Diaoyu. His remarks are highly unlikely to represent mainstream party thinking, but they are a sign of increasing outspokenness among hardline military officers who want China to deploy its growing military strength more assertively. During a potentially unsettling leadership transition, the party has plenty of interests to juggle.

from the print edition | China

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Japan and China

Barren rocks, barren nationalism

Both countries should turn to pragmatism, not stridency, in dealing with island spats

Aug 25th 2012 | from the print edition

THE wave of anti-Japanese protests that has erupted across China, after tit-for-tat landings by ultranationalists on uninhabited islands which the Japanese call the Senkakus and the Chinese the Diaoyus, is alarming. It is a reminder of how a barren group of disputed rocks could upend pain-staking progress in the difficult relations between Asia’s two biggest powers (see article). And the spat even raises the spectre of a conflict that could conceivably draw in America.

History always weighs heavily in East Asia, so it is essential to understand theroots of the squabble. China has never formally controlled the Senkakus, and for most Japanese, blithely forgetful of their country’s rapacious, imperial past, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Yet the islands’ history is ambiguous. The Senkakus first crept into the record lying in the Chinese realm, just beyond the Ryukyu kingdom, which in the 1870s was absorbed by Japan and renamed Okinawa. The Chinese emperor objected to Japanese attempts to incorporate the Senkakus into Okinawa, but in 1895 Japan did it unilaterally. After Japan’s defeat in 1945 the Americans took over Okinawa’s administration, along with the Senkakus. In the 1951 peace treaty between Japan and the United States, as well as in the agreement to return Okinawa in 1972, the Senkakus’ sovereignty was left vague (Taiwan claims them too). The Americans say the dispute is for the parties to resolve amicably.

Three decades ago that looked possible. Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s modernisation, recognised the risks. When he signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan in 1978, the two countries agreed to kick the Senkakus into the long grass. “Our generation”, Deng said, “is not wise enough to find common language on this question. The next generation will be wiser.” His hopes have been dashed.

Chinese maritime power is growing, in ways that not only challenge Japan’s control of the Senkakus (but also worry other countries that have maritime disputes with China). Maritime law has evolved with exclusive economic zones around territories (see article). So all the islets have become more valuable. The current squabble began when the right-wing governor of Tokyo declared that the metropolitan government would buy the Senkakus from their indebted private owner, the better to assert Japanese sovereignty. Not to be seen as weak, Yoshihiko Noda, the prime minister, retorted that the Japanese government would buy them instead.

The natural solution

What can be done? Neither side wants to jeopardise good relations, let alone go to war, over the Senkakus. But the fact that there is a (remote) danger of conflict should prompt both governments to do two things. The long-term task is to defang the more poisonous nationalist serpents in both countries’ politics. In Japan that means producing honest textbooks so that schoolchildren can discover what their predecessors did. In China (no promulgator of honest textbooks itself) the government must abandon its habit of using Japanophobia as an outlet for populist anger, when modern Japan has been such a force for peace and prosperity in Asia. But the priority now is to look for ways to minimise the chances of unwished-for conflict, especially in seas swarming with rival vessels.

At a minimum that means not only having hotlines between the two governments, but also cast-iron commitments from the Chinese always to pick up the phone. A mechanism to deal with maritime issues between the two countries was set up last year, but crumbled when put to the test. Ideally, both sides should make it clear that military force is not an option. China should undertake not to send official vessels into Japanese waters, as it still occasionally does, and deal more forcefully with militaristic sabre-rattlers like the general who suggested using the Senkakus for bombing practice. Back in 2008 the two countries agreed on a framework for the joint development of disputed gasfields in the East China Sea, though China unpicked this good work when a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coastguard vessel near the Senkakus in 2010.

As for the Senkakus themselves, Mr Noda’s proposal to buy them would have value if accompanied by a commitment to leave them unvisited. And it would be easier to face down the nationalists if America acknowledged its own past role in sweeping competing claims over the Senkakus under the carpet. Our own suggestion is for governments to agree to turn the Senkakus and the seas round them—along with other rocks contested by Japan and South Korea—into pioneering marine protected areas. As well as preventing war between humans, it would help other species. Thanks to decades of overfishing, too few fish swim in those waters anyway.

from the print edition | Leaders

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Relations on the rocks

Aug 27th 2012, 09:56

The dispute over “Diaoyu” or “Senkaku” islets has lasted for nearly a year, from Ishihara Shintaro’s expression on “Senkaku’s buyout”. Several weeks ago, Chinese activists, mainly from Hong Kong, abruptly launched a rush to rise Chinese flag in the main island for a claim of sovereignty (protection of Diaoyu, or “Baodiao”). Besides, Taiwan’s activists put forward the plan to do “Baodiao” at the start of September last week. The tension in this issue is hard to ease at the current time.

On Apr. 22, I wrote a comment on the Economist’s “Hot rocks” on Banyan, talking about the moment when Beijing and Tokyo normalized the diplomatic tie. At that time, China’s former prime minister Zhou En-lai was abruptly requested for who Diaoyu might belonged to. In front of Japan’s counterpart Kakuei Tanaka, Zhou admitted that Diaoyu concerned might become a issue in the future, but Zhou felt strange of Tanaka’s behaviour saying “it’s not good to discuss it now”. Therefore, both nation cannot reach the consensus until the present.

From the above, Japan apparently “played thief with shedding nothing”. As I sometimes contacted Tokyo’s ruling party, Mr. Shintaro sticks Japan’s sovereignty over the islets, as his sayings, according to Treaty of Shimonoseki; from the treaty rectified, as he thought, Japan may “keep the islets” under Japan’s control. But be careful of Shintaro’s derivation of relative treaty. By this sayings’ logic, Japan occupied the islets from 1985 to 1945 with Taiwan; in the aftermath of World War Two, the islets with Taiwan was back to Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang regime of China.

Oh! Really? So strangely to say, Taipei authority’s Ma Ying-jeou seems to reach the most precise answer to this issue among Beijing, Taipei and Tokyo, because Ma, last week, seriously insisted on Diaoyu belonging to Taiwan island by his “international definition” in special press conference. Later, Ma and Taiwan’s press journalists took Wikipedia’s writings to say that Diaoyu was “administered” under China’s control from Ming dynasty as “recorded” by poem and anecdote. Therefore, most of Taiwanese is inclined to claim Taipei’s sovereignty of the islets for over 400 years. Paradoxically, Shintaro always sees himself as the most friendly Japanese with Taiwan, with a willing to helping Taiwan’s independence from Beijing. He cannot have it both way.

Of course, Taipei authority has no right word by real international logic. The above can be seen a stupid joke. The earliest record by government about Diaoyu is Qings navy by the strongest officer, Lee Hung-zhang, who established the once-strongest North- and South-oceanic Fleet. Diaoyu, having been classified under South-oceanic Fleet’s control from Chinese modern navys debut to the present, was never ceded to and by anyone. Until the moment of Qing’s end of reign in Beijing, Qing’s Fleet still guarded the islets. That is to say, Diaoyu is constantly held by China. The slight embarrassment is that Diaoyu cannot be seen as one part of Taiwan. As international routine, Beijing owns the islets beyond question. Anyway, Diaoyu is never Japan’s territory.

Following the constant peaceful principle of China’s Communist Party toward Japan, as a whole, Beijing hardly launch the battle conflicting with Tokyo. In my opinion, China and Japan have yet touched the deadline of launching military conflict. Moreover, the fifth-generation CCP, including Xi Jin-ping and Li Ke-qiang, remains calm as possible to face this dilemma. And I still continue to purchase Japan’s electronic product, clothes and pop music as usual by order of these two. A good question is that if Beijing needs to take democratic approach to this issue, immediately, China’s navy must directly attack Japan’s defense military. Taken Yasukuni and comfort women into consideration, Chinese ordinary mostly hate Japan horribly. Symbolically, holding Diaoyu can be seen the full sovereignty of East China Sea. To take military action is better than to say more history. China must not surrender to anyone who illegally have any means to rationalize themselves.

Recently, with the crisis around South China Sea rising and US army’s relocation in Pacific Ocean, China’s growth slowed down under the weather. China still play a role of world’s economic generator arduously while gradually becoming an isolated one by neighbors. By contrast, Japan has least good feeling. Japan just relies on American, arguing with Russia, Taipei authourity and South Korea besides China. Also, Japan cannot afford to risk the loss of economic and military cost on Diaoyu. Furthermore, it’s said by Chinese media that Japan plans to stretch their arms into South China Sea and intends to recover the so-called Emperor Muji’s “Nippon Imperial” in Asia. Of course, I still feel this rumor funny but alarm to what no one ensures tomorrow’s weather while no caring about catching a cold. Please take this to Yoshihiko Noda again, although I already hinted to him last week.

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