China's Territorial Disputes (13 page)

A seven-member negotiating team from the Taiwanese foreign ministry, interior ministry, and the state-funded unofficial Council of Agriculture left for Japan on 3 October 1996 to discuss fishing rights and other issues arising from the Diaoyu islands controversy with leading officials of the “Japan Interchange Association,” which handles Japan-Taiwan affairs.
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An official of the Council of Agriculture announced that although Taiwan would seek maximum fishing rights for its people, it would not do so at the expense of a concession on sovereignty. Perhaps this round of semi-official talks did bear some fruit, for when the delegates left Tokyo for Taipei two days later, they announced that the Japanese had agreed to adhere to a previous understanding not to interfere with Taiwanese vessels fishing outside the 12-mile territorial sea limit of the islands.
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The Japanese government, on its part, announced that it would not grant official recognition to the Kita-Kojima lighthouse, although it did not order the lighthouse to be taken down. The last time the Japanese government had said it would not grant official recognition to a lighthouse built by a right-wing group on the islands, it had waited eleven years to do just that.

On 6 October, led by a Taipei county councilman, 300 Taiwanese and Hong Kong activists set sail again to Tiaoyutai in twenty-nine fishing boats, some of whom landed on the main island briefly to hoist both national flags of the PRC and ROC before being chased away by Japanese vessels.
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At least one of the protest boats was chartered by the Taiwanese New Party for its activists, a clear sign of the involvement of a political party in the Tiaoyutai imbroglio.
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The activists claimed victory, but the ultimate aim of all protesters - to demolish the Seinensha lighthouse which cost David Chan his life - remained unfulfilled.

After the latest brouhaha had all but blown over, the US State Department reiterated its stance adopted on the eve of the Okinawa Reversion twenty-four years previously that it would not side with Japan, China or Taiwan in their claims over the sovereignty of the Senkakus.
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US Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale subsequently stated that the Senkakus were not covered by the Japan-US security alliance.
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The US seemed to be employing a mild form of external pressure
(gaiatsu)
to signal to Japan’s post-election LDP that it was not the time to adopt a more nationalistic foreign policy. As one analyst noted, “the US simply cannot build a new Pacific Rim order without Japanese help, and Japan cannot help if it shows bad faith on bilateral territorial issues and becomes a diplomatic
persona non grata
to other Asian countries.”
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On 13 November 1996, in a move to repair the damage caused to Japanese relations with China as a result of the Senkaku incident, Japanese foreign minister Ikeda described Japan-China relations as being on the same footing as that of Japan-US relations, and said that not only was the government not involved in the construction of the “beacon,” but that even if an application were to be made under the Channel Marker Law, “we will not give our approval.”
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Nevertheless, the position of the Japanese government is to settle the delimitation of the continental shelf between Japan and China before starting talks on joint exploration.

As long as China and Taiwan eyed one another with suspicion, it would be impossible for them to coordinate a common sovereignty, economic or strategic position
vis-a-vis
the Japanese, other than separately reaffirming historic Chinese sovereignty over the islands. A pointed example was Taiwanese defense minister Chiang Chungling’s public statement that Taiwan’s policy in the Tiaoyutai affair would be to offer no protection to protest boats displaying the mainland flag.
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On the other hand, Japan has effective administrative control of the disputed territories and is in the best position to play off one party against another -negotiating on sovereignty with China, bargaining on fishing rights with Taiwan, and reserving for itself the freedom to maneuver its air force, coastguard and navy in the vicinity of the islands which it controls, while allowing its oil companies to explore for undersea minerals and its fishermen to engage in fishing activities.

The Japanese had no need to remind their neighbors that their cumulative investments up to 1996 amounted to $13 billion in China, $6 billion in Taiwan, and$14 billion in Hong Kong.
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Japan has been the largest supplier of development aid to China, contributing an estimated $19 billion between 1979 and 1995; it has been China’s largest trading partner since 1993, and is the third largest investor in China, behind the United States and Hong Kong.
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While in 1950, when Sino-Japanese trade was conducted on a small scale between small and medium-sized trading companies, the trade volume measured a paltry $40 million, compared to almost $1,000 million in 1972, the year relations were normalized between China and Japan.
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The value of bilateral trade subsequently rose to $4,073 million in 1978, $18,201 million in 1990, and $62,230 million in 1996.
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In 1995, 19.1 percent of China’s exports went to Japan.
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Total Japanese loans and investments in China used by the Chinese were valued at $3,212.50 million in 1995.
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Since 1996, the governments of China, Taiwan and Japan have done nothing to encourage, and have indeed taken every measure possible to forestall further incidents from breaking out over the disputed rocks. Given the collapse of the USSR and world Communism, their common enemy in Asia, the value of the 1978 Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty to both China and Japan has declined. If so, then the domestic political cost of bilateral disagreement has also declined. As a result, leaders in both countries may prove less willing to accommodate the domestic situation of their partner, for the value of positive reverberation from compromise and agreement between the two governments will now be lowered. Assertive nationalism in China, and to a lesser extent in Japan, is held at bay by expectations of mutual economic gains through increased trade and investment, and fear of accidental military provocation. However, should the matrix of the equation be altered, nationalist pressure on either side, aggravated by trade imbalance amidst uncontrolled arms build-up, could lead to a marked rise in the frequency and magnitude of unpredictable incidents surrounding Diaoyudao/Senkaku.

In the 1970s and 1980s, during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the US, China and Japan had formed a
de facto
strategic alliance against the USSR, and the islands issue could be temporarily shelved for the sake of common security interests. However, the US and Japan are now both undecided as to whether to engage China comprehensively as an equal player in the international system, or regard it as a rising regional hegemon and troublemaker to be quietly checked. What is apparent is that, while the actual amount of oil imported by Japan has actually decreased,
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China became a net importer of the mineral for the first time in 1993. This means that, if drillings on the offshore East China Sea wells pan out, she may increasingly desire a quick and advantageous resolution to the sovereignty question of the Diaoyu Islands. If the US and Japan are concerned about China’s might and perplexed by its intentions, they have even less idea on what to do with Taiwan. As such, while the US devises a long-term Chinese strategy, it would probably feel safest were the Senkaku Islands to remain in the hands of their most steadfast and long-term ally in the Asia-Pacific region - the Japanese.

Subsequent incidents, findings and conclusions

So what has been demonstrated by the involvement of domestic politicized pressure groups in the official actions and reactions by the governments of the three claimant states of Japan, Taiwan and China with regard to the recurring dispute over the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands?

Negotiation is a search for joint gains by two or more parties in a situation characterized by both conflict and cooperation. A creative way of finding joint gains through negotiations is to “unbundle” different interests and give to each what it values most.
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If China is found to care a great deal about sovereignty over those little pieces of Diaoyu rocks, while Taiwan is heavily concerned with continued access to fishing grounds, and Japan wants to develop hydrocarbon resources in the sea-bed as soon as possible, then perhaps a way can be found by government negotiators from the three countries to give China “sovereignty” over the rocks themselves, award Taiwan the water column of the territorial sea and the living resources in it, and grant Japan the right to exploit the resources in the sea-bed below the territorial sea. Unfortunately, there is no way of discerning the preference ranking of the interests of each party, and if asked, the negotiators would most likely hold to a claim for everything about the islands, especially when they know that their governments have an eye out for settling other outstanding territorial claims as much in their own favor as possible.

Even before the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands controversy first surfaced in the late 1960s, all three contestants to the claim were already having territorial sovereignty disputes with other countries. Taiwan was contesting claims with Southeast Asian countries as to the sovereignty of the Paracel and Spratly island groups in the South China Sea; China was also claiming these South China Sea islands in addition to involving itself in violent border disputes with India and the Soviet Union; and Japan was involved in territorial sovereignty claims with the Soviet Union over four islands in the Kurile Chain and with (South) Korea over the Tokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rock in the Sea of Japan. As such, every one of the state governments knows that willingness on the part of any of the three parties to settle for less than absolute and undivided sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands may compromise or even jeopardize its negotiating positions with other countries with which it has ongoing disputes over sovereignty. Hence it is little wonder that the Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese governments chose to adhere to a maximal claim and an inflexible official bargaining position over this particular territorial dispute.

Equally if not more important than the countries’ positions on the sovereignty question are the domestic factors at play, which more or less decided the timing, method and intensity of the dispute.

Each recurrence of the dispute over the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands was always preceded by some major inter-governmental negotiation or national debate on an important territorial, economic or security issue, which was then promptly followed by the activities of non-governmental nationalist organizations out to assert sovereignty claims on behalf of their countries. In the early 1970s, it was the discovery of offshore oil deposits and official talks on joint development that led to the placing of Japanese boundary markers on one of the islands, and to nationalist demonstrations by Taiwanese students. In 1978, it was the negotiations over the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty that led to activities by Japanese right-wingers to construct a lighthouse on the biggest island and to the dispatch of armed Chinese “fishing junks.” In 1990, it was the debate over the Gulf Cooperation Bill in Japan’s Diet and the decision by its government to recognize the lighthouse that sparked off another right-wing expedition to the islands and the Taiwanese torch relay. In 1996, debate in the Diet on establishing a 200-mile EEZ led to further expeditions to the islands by Japanese nationalists in order to build and repair a new lighthouse, which again gave rise to massive protests, demonstrations and other activities by Taiwanese, Chinese and Hong Kong activists. In January 2003, when the Diet was debating how to assist US forces in its pre-emptive assault on Iraq, the Japanese government apparently leased several of the disputed islands from a Japanese family which, it claimed, had owned them for more than thirty years. After news of this transaction leaked, thirteen mainland Chinese and two Hong Kongers set sail for the islands in June 2003 on a fishing boat in protest, but were quickly and peaceably turned back by nine Japanese patrol ships and five aircraft.
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As we can see, the periodic outbreaks of this Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku affair were never fortuitous.

The use of symbolic and emotive gestures was the method by which domestic forces asserted their claims to the islands, probably because they themselves respond most readily to nationalistic forms. They calculated that by planting flags, placing border markers, setting up commemorative plaques, constructing small beacons and lighthouses, inviting journalists to witness their physical presence on the islands, and swimming off their shores, they would be able to make the greatest appeal to a broad populace which has little time or patience to appreciate convoluted technical and legal arguments on CSCs, EEZs, or the validity of territorial claims under international law. The governments of the three disputant states have tried as best as they can to cool tempers and play down the controversy whenever it has arisen, but as long as the issue of territorial sovereignty over the islands remains unresolved, they will not be able to prevent these domestic forces from seizing the initiative once again to assert their nationalistic claims. When a Japanese Dietman and three fellow nationalists visited the islands in May 1997,
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they were quickly denounced as provocative by their government, which subsequently deployed sixty patrol craft and five helicopters to prevent 200 Taiwanese and Hong Kong activists from reaching the islands in boats as a sign of protest.
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On 4 August 1999, Japan’s House of Representatives’ National Security Committee canceled a plan to send some of its members to “inspect” the disputed islands and erect a Japanese flag there, when news of the proposed visit leaked and a noisy protest involving more than eighty people was staged outside the Japanese consulate in Hong Kong the day before.
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The quick and decisive action taken by the Japanese authorities in criticizing its own nationalists and stopping the protest boats, together with the scrupulous silence observed by the governments of China and Taiwan, prevented this episode of the long-running Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku saga from mushrooming into another drawn-out fracas.