China's Territorial Disputes (10 page)

Sunada, and agriculture and forestry minister Natagawa asked the government not to hurry with the resumption of talks with Beijing.
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Chinese analysts on the whole regarded such actions as attempts by Japan to make use of China’s strategic vulnerability toward the USSR by pressuring it to cede the disputed islands as the price for including the “anti-hegemony” clause in the PFT.
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Speaking to a group of reporters in May, Deng himself reiterated the claim of PRC sovereignty over the disputed isles; however, he also said that incidents like those involving the fishing trawlers would not occur again. The 29 April 1978 editorial of Hong Kong’s
Ming Pao Daily
characterized as “taiji (shadow-boxing) diplomacy” China’s move over the fishing trawler affair, which it said was unofficially executed according to plan, while officially it was accidental and wholly unpremeditated. It turns out that the Chinese were not the only people capable of this kind of “taiji diplomacy.”

In a report to the Diet shortly after, a Japanese councilor minister said that, since Deng had mentioned that the PRC had no intention of taking up the issue of sovereignty, then
inter alia
, the prevailing situation of Japan continuing to exercise effective control over the Senkaku Islands would continue, and “to raise the territorial issue again would reflect a lack of far-sightedness.”
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Needless to say, the claim of exercising effective control is of course the standard Japanese argument for demonstration of sovereignty in the event of a territorial claim. After the negotiations over the PFT were completed in August 1978, Nakasone said that according to Japanese interpretation, China had “in reality” recognized Japanese control and sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, because Deng had already guaranteed to the Japanese that incidents like the appearances of armed PRC fishing trawlers in Senkaku waters would never occur again.
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What Deng actually said was:

It is true that both sides maintain different views on this question. . It does not matter if this question is shelved for some time. . Our generation is not wise enough to find common language on this question. The next generation will certainly be wiser. They will certainly find a solution acceptable to

Since then, “shelving claims for economic development” has become China’s diplomatic leitmotif in its treatment of all unsettled boundary and territorial questions, from the Sino-Soviet border along the Amur and Ussuri rivers, to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, although its effectiveness has yet been tested in practice.

When the issue of sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands first surfaced during negotiations over the PFT, Deng and his supporters were caught on the horns of a dilemma: Confront Japan over it and risk losing the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty, which would cement a
de facto
security alliance between China and Japan against a common threat from the Soviet Union; or not challenge Japan over it and risk alienating domestic power-brokers who were against Deng’s program of opening China to foreign trade and investment, and would criticize his “open-door” policy as coming at the expense of territorial concessions. However, although Deng might never have heard of Robert Putnam or his study of diplomacy involving “two-level games,” the Chinese leader was already a master diplomat of first-class distinction. Deng knew that he could not be perceived as being “soft” on territorial encroachments by the Japanese if he were to have any chance of replacing the autarkic, heavy-industrialization program of his political rivals with his own vision of a Chinese economy based on agricultural productivity, light consumer industries, and foreign trade and investment. However, if he were to make a move against Japanese claims on Diaoyudao, he would have to make sure that he could manipulate Japanese public and official opinion so as to realize the speediest conclusion of the PFT. Fortunately, Deng understood the basis of “synergy,” which is to exploit joint gains or mutual benefits in international bargaining, through the creation of coalitions favoring cooperation in both China and Japan. In this case, joint gains or mutual benefits in bargaining over the PFT involved an increase in trade and investment between China and Japan, an expansion of the Chinese market to Japanese economic penetration, an external validation of Deng’s “open-door” policy by a powerful neighboring Asian country, and the creation of an informal common front against possible military moves from the Soviet Union.

One crucial way to create “synergy” is to target “swing voters,” people who hold the keys to gaining domestic ratification of an international agreement, by providing them with “selective” incentives for cooperation. As the Senkaku crisis was developing, representatives of the pro-Chinese pro-PFT lobby were “invited” to Beijing, and eminent Beijing leaders were “explaining” to them “the accidental nature” of the Chinese fishing vessels entering Senkaku waters and the need to disregard that incident for the sake of long-term Sino-Japanese ties. The deputy speaker of the Japanese Diet was met by Liao Chengzhi, chairman of the Sino-Japanese Friendship Society, and a delegation of the Japanese Social Democratic League had talks with Chinese Vice-premier Geng Biao. Liao also met a Japanese Socialist Party delegation led by its chairman, to whom he mentioned Beijing’s support for the return of the “Northern Territories” to Japan from the Soviet Union, and Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping himself met with a Komeito delegation, to whom he made clear that there could be no question of not including the “anti-hegemony” clause in the proposed treaty.
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China also brought its influence to bear on the Fukuda government by taking its case to Japan. In an interview with Kenji Kono, speaker of the Diet’s House of Councilors, Chinese ambassador to Japan Fu Hao criticized the “passiveness” of Premier Fukuda for affecting the progress of the PFT, and “expressed doubts” as to whether he had the desire to sign the treaty.
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Fu knew that the conservative forces in Japanese politics were deeply divided over the China question. This statement was calculated to embarrass Fukuda, for he had taken the stance of the pro-Taiwan “Asian Problems Study Group” against the pro-PRC position of the “Asian-African Problems Study Group” which supported his two predecessors as prime ministers, Takeo Miki and before him Kakuei Tanaka.
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The Chinese also reached out to Japanese political and business circles, by approaching people like Shin Kanemaru, LDP bigwig and director-general of the Japanese National Defense Agency, who was known as an active champion of the build-up of the Japanese Armed Forces, and businessmen linked to Chinese trading companies through lucrative contracts.
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Such businessmen included Yoshihiro Inayama, president of the Japan-China Association on Economy and Trade and of the Nippon Steel Corporation, who had announced that his company would undertake shortly the construction of a steel-mill in Shanghai.
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By working so hard on the “anti-hegemony” clause, the Chinese leadership had probably impressed their American counterparts regarding the seriousness with which the United States should view the success or failure of the proposed Sino-Japanese Treaty and the ability of America’s two East Asian allies to contain Soviet “expansionism” in the region. If the Chinese were hoping to get the Americans to exert some
gaiatsu
, external pressure, on the Japanese over the treaty, they were not to be disappointed. During Fukuda’s May 1978 visit to the United States, President Jimmy Carter “wished a successful conclusion” to the PFT and said that America “does not oppose the inclusion of the antihegemony article in the text of the treaty.”
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The president’s national security advisor Zbignew Brzezinski also spoke in favor of a speedy conclusion to the PFT in his meetings with Fukuda.
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That was all the political space that Fukuda needed to justify his conversion to a pro-treaty stance and calm the fear of Japanese socialists that the PFT might be provocative to the Soviets.

The Senkaku interlude was finally over when Japanese prime minister Takeo Fukuda announced on 27 May 1978 that his government had decided to resume talks with China over the PFT. Deng’s skillful use of economic incentives and exploitation of the Soviet bogeyman apparently succeeded in rearranging Japanese coalition politics so that the anti-treaty forces were finally isolated and defeated. By asserting his country’s claims to the Diaoyu Islands so visibly and forcefully, Deng also succeeded in brushing up his own nationalist credentials and that of the People’s Republic of China at the expense of the Republic of China on Taiwan, which was facing increasing diplomatic isolation and was thus in no position to force a showdown with Tokyo. Incidentally, it was the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) that did not “reverberate” to Deng’s threat or enticements, criticizing Beijing throughout the incident in the sharpest tone. Perhaps to demonstrate his party’s independence from Beijing, Kenji Miyamoto, chairman of the JCP Central Committee, said that “Japan should take a resolute stance aimed at preventing [Beijing’s] actions and proceed in its policy from the premise that the Senkaku Islands are Japanese territory.”
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The opposition parties should also take a firm stand, Miyamoto reasoned, “otherwise, they will give the impression they are taking a spineless attitude toward seeking a treaty at all costs,”
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a charge his party would not like to have levied on it. Equally uncompromising was one Ts. Hoshina, spokesman and Central Committee member of the JCP, who accused Beijing of resorting to force to impose its territorial claims on Japan, and of having planned the Senkaku fishing expedition beforehand.
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Deng was apparently desperate to sidestep the territorial dispute to avoid a delay in concluding the PFT, which would achieve the higher policy objectives of facilitating closer Sino-Japanese relations and creating a united front against Soviet “hegemony,” not to mention a consolidation of his own political position at home against his rivals. If Deng had indeed secured his treaty only by not challenging the
de facto
Japanese control over the islands, although the purpose of the fishing trawlers was to demonstrate that the Chinese people would not yield on sovereignty, then such an action has only postponed the day of reckoning between Japan and the PRC over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and between both governments and their constituents. If the Chinese believed that the Japanese were as prepared as they were to shelve the territorial question indefinitely in favor of starting joint development of oil on the continental shelf, then the subsequent position of the Japanese foreign ministry on the need to hold talks on the delimitation of a boundary on the continental shelf before proceeding with each country’s own development on its own side of the boundary must have seemed very disappointing.
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It was indeed the sovereignty impasse that caused the collapse of a series of intermittent and ultimately inconclusive talks held by both sides between 1978 and 1982 over sea-bed exploration for oil in the vicinity of the islands.

As an affront to the Chinese and to demonstrate Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku, members of the right-wing Japanese nationalist political organization, the Seirankai, including the prominent writer Shintaro Ishihara, promptly erected a simple lighthouse on Uotsuri, the largest of the disputed isles, within days of the Nakasone speech. The first beacon was nothing more than a simple electric lightbulb hanging from an iron pipe.
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Subsequently, it seems, the Seirankai had planned to erect a second one, and enlisted the help and financial contribution of a second, bigger and wealthier right-wing Japanese nationalist organization, the Nihon Seinensha, or Japanese Youth Federation. However, although their application to the Ministry of Transport ministry to have their proposed lighthouse registered in the navigational chart was approved, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs apparently did not want to create another international incident and vetoed the proposal, and the lighthouse was not authorized for construction. The Seinensha nonetheless went ahead with its construction apparently without government opposition. While the crisis was taking place in April, chief cabinet secretary Shintaro Abe suggested that the Japanese government construct a heliport and a refuge port for fishermen facing typhoons.
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However, no immediate action was taken because prime minister Fukuda refused to act on the suggestion. Interestingly enough, the Japanese government then proceeded to build a small helicopter pad on the main island of Uotsuri in August 1979, and in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crisis in China, when no one was paying attention, it officially endorsed the beacon erected originally by the Seirankai by including it in the official Japanese navigational charts published in September 1989.
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Storm clouds were once again gathering over the Senkakus, after a dozen years of relative calm.

The third incident: of torches and lighthouses (1990)

The 1990 incident over the Senkakus was largely a row between the Japanese right-wing Seinensha group and Taiwanese fishermen’s associations, which turned out to be quite a formidable pressure group, ultimately involving the Japanese and Taiwanese governments. The fall of 1990 witnessed the start of the Gulf War and heated debate in the Japanese Diet on the doomed Gulf Cooperation Bill (GCB) that would have dispatched Self Defense Forces to the region and elsewhere in the world in a non-combatant role.
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On 29 September 1990, the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency (MSA) decided to recognize the lighthouse constructed by the Seinensha in 1978 by including it in the official navigational charts and allowing members of the right-wing group to renovate the lighthouse, which they promptly did.
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Drawing the conclusion that the GCB debate, MSA action and lighthouse renovation were more than coincidental, on