Greater China unites - on barren
rocks By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Where can the national flags
of the People's Republic of China and the Republic
of China (or Taiwan), officially regarded by
Beijing as a "renegade province", fly side by
side? On barren, uninhabited islands also claimed
by Japan, of course.
At least for the time
being, it seems only the Japanese can succeed in
uniting mainland Chinese with their fractious kin
in Taiwan, while also bringing on board Hong Kong, another
problematic relation, and
Macau, an apolitical gambling mecca.
Hong
Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule in
1997, and Macau was handed back to the China by
Portugal in 1999.
The ongoing dispute over
these potentially resource-rich islands - known as
Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan - is a
perennial issue that China's leaders use as suits
their purposes, to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment
and boost nationalism among Chinese everywhere.
Two Sino-Japanese wars (1895-1896 and
1937-1945), the Rape of Nanking (1937), Japan's de
facto colonization of Taiwan (1895-1945) and its
brutal occupation of Hong Kong (1941-1945) - all
these dark memories were just beneath the surface
when Chinese activists last week hired fishing
boats for a quixotic, flag-bearing mission to
these rocky outcrops in the East China Sea.
Japan's ultimately failed ambition to rule
over all of Asia - which ended with two nuclear
clouds over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in August of 1945 - somehow becomes emotionally
tied to a political sea stunt with no practical
significance.
The islands are at present a
privately owned part of Okinawa Prefecture, but
Beijing and Taipei also claim them and strenuously
objected to a recent statement by Japanese Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda that his government was
considering purchasing them.
Waters rich
in oil and natural gas reserves surround the
islands, and these reserves are a real and serious
bone of contention between Tokyo, Beijing and
Taipei.
For the activists who have invaded
the islands - and for the publicity surrounding
their antics - the focus is not oil or gas. Their
goal is to be seen on televisions, computers and
smart phones around the world hoisting flags and
shouting nationalistic slogans as they are
corralled by coast guard officers. And, last week,
for the first time since 1996, a Hong Kong-based
group achieved that goal, clambering onto the
largest of the islands before being seized by the
coast guard.
In July, a Taiwanese fishing
boat, escorted by five vessels from Taiwan's coast
guard, raised a flag near the islands;
confusingly, however, it was a People's Republic
of China flag, not Taiwan's.
In September
2010, after a Chinese fishing boat appeared
deliberately to ram into a Japan Coast Guard
patrol near the islands, the captain and crew of
the vessel were arrested and detained, prompting a
vigorous protest from Beijing. Crew members were
released a week later while the captain was held
for 18 days; no charges were filed.
At the
time, Chinese authorities regarded the detentions
as an escalation of the dispute over the islands;
previous offenders had been deported after only a
brief lockup, again without being charged.
This time around, the Japanese resorted to
the old formula and deported the 14 people
involved in Wednesday's incident - eight
activists, two journalists and the boat's crew -
but not before the activists, who are sponsored by
the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu
Islands, could raise their flags and shout slogans
such as "Japan out of the Diaoyu Islands! Down
with Japanese militarism!"
Seven of the
still-defiant activists flew back to Hong Kong on
Friday; the others are headed back to the city,
under escort by a Chinese vessel, in the trawler,
Kai Fung 2, that carried them to the
islands.
Not to be outdone, 150 Japanese
nationalists, including eight parliamentarians,
organized a 20-boat flotilla to the islands on
Sunday where they, too, were met by the coast
guard and denied permission to disembark;
nevertheless, 10 of them jumped into the sea and
swam ashore, promptly raising Japanese flags.
China's Foreign Ministry issued a "serious
protest" last week over Japan's interception of
Kai Fung 2, calling it a "gross violation
of China's territorial integrity," and issued
another rebuke to Tokyo on Sunday for allowing the
Japanese expedition to the islands.
The
Japanese flotilla sparked angry protests in across
China, with one in Shenzhen drawing 20,000 people
and turning nasty as demonstrators overturned
Japanese-brand cars and pitched rocks and bottles
through windows of Japanese restaurants.
The names and backgrounds of the motley
band aboard Kai Fung 2 add a rich layer of
irony to this story. Indeed, when they are not
scrambling over rocks in the East China Sea, the
Hong Kong activists spend much of their time
demonstrating against Chinese rule in their city.
Former legislator Tsang Kin-shing, for
example, a member of the radical League of Social
Democrats (LSD) who is better known as "The Bull"
among Hong Kong's population of 7.1 million, takes
part in just about every big anti-government rally
staged in the city, including the annual June 4
candlelight vigil to honor those killed in the
1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in
Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Needless to
say, you will not hear Tsang trumpeting pro-China
slogans at the candlelight vigil, or at any of the
other protests in which he plays a role. But the
dispute over the islands instantly transforms him
into a die-hard patriot.
Two other
activists on board the trawler - construction
workers Koo Sze-yiu and Lo Chau - are also closely
associated with the LSD, whose members have made a
practice of throwing fruit and other objects at
Hong Kong's chief executive and his ministers when
they appear in the chamber of the Legislative
Council, Hong Kong's mini-parliament.
Ng
Shek-yiu from Macau and Fang Xiaosong from
mainland China joined the group on Kai Fung
2, giving it an appearance of unity and wide
representation that helped to inspire the
anti-Japan protests in Hong Kong and across the
mainland.
So far, from Beijing's point of
view, most of these manifestations of national
pride have been a good thing: widespread and loud
enough to make an impression on Tokyo but - the
Shenzhen bedlam aside - not bloody and chaotic,
threatening instability.
The violence in
Shenzhen goes to show that Chinese leaders are
playing what can be a dangerous game. So, too,
however, are the Japanese.
The protests
may have been triggered by the antics of activists
on both sides, but it certainly did nothing to
boost Sino-Japanese relations last week when two
of Noda's cabinet members - Jin Matsubara, who
heads a bureau seeking the return of Japanese who
have been kidnapped by North Korea, and land
minister Yuichiro Hata - paid separate visits to
the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where 2.5
million war dead are honored, including 14
convicted war criminals from World War II. Such
visits revive bitter memories and light up tempers
all over Asia, especially in China.
Overall, the Chinese leadership must view
this latest anti-Japanese sea voyage as an
unqualified success, and it seems clear Beijing
did nothing to discourage it.
It is no
accident that the East China Sea has not witnessed
a Hong Kong-launched protest since 1996 as the
Hong Kong, and central governments have made a
point of blocking any such plan. By contrast, this
year's activists faced minimal, if not token,
resistance until they ran into the Japan Coast
Guard as they approached the islands.
Four
Hong Kong marine-police boarded the trawler as it
began its journey last Sunday and, according to
police chief Andy Tsang Wai-hung, tried to stop
it. Finding the vessel's wheelhouse locked and
lacking the equipment to break into it, however,
Tsang said the officers gave up and left the boat
180 meters from international waters.
Also
this year, in an unprecedented move, Hong Kong's
recently elected chief executive, Leung Chun-yin,
summoned Japanese Consul-General Yuji Kumamaru to
demand the release of the activists and to plead
the case for Chinese ownership of the islands.
The summons is likely to boost Leung's
flagging popularity while at the same time
allowing Beijing to score points against Tokyo
without becoming directly involved.
That's
the way the Chinese leadership likes it.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based
teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing56@gmail.com Follow him on Twitter:
@KentEwing1
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