By Eva Cheng
On September 15, 12,000 people took to the streets in Hong Kong to protest Tokyo's recent manoeuvres to renew claims over the Diaoyu islands (called Senkaku by Japan). Ownership of these islands, 200 km north-east of Taiwan, has been in dispute between China and Japan for 25 years. Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of China, also claims ownership of the Diaoyus.
Officially, the Hong Kong protest was to commemorate Japan's invasion of Manchuria on September 18, 1931. That invasion escalated to extended occupation of other parts of China, bombings and brutal massacres which killed millions, and only ended with the Japanese defeat in 1945. That horrific history left a deep impression on the psyche of the Chinese and the residual anger that is still directed towards Japan meant that few of the Hong Kong protesters took the rally as anything less than a public assertion of Chinese ownership over the Diaoyus.
Within days of the rally, 20,000 staged a similar protest in Macao (a Portuguese colony which is to be returned to China in 1999) and 4000 — predominantly of Chinese origin — protested in Vancouver. On September 18, 8000 took part in a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong. Similar, though smaller, protests also took place in Taiwan, Toronto and other overseas Chinese communities.
In late September, 40,000 poured into Hong Kong's Victoria Park to mourn the death of a Hong Kong activist who was drowned during a protest mission near the waters of the Diaoyus.
A core section of the Hong Kong protesters attended many rallies on the same issue in the same park 25 years ago as students. Thousands took part in that international wave of radicalisation of young overseas Chinese under the banner "Defend Diaoyutai" (tai means island). Those protests were triggered by the US's 1971 reversion to Japan of the Ryukyu groups of islands, of which Okinawa is a part. The Diaoyus were included in that package, despite widespread Chinese protest.
While starting with a strong nationalist undertone, that movement soon developed into a process of political awakening for a broad layer of young overseas Chinese. It helped many break free of the ruling class propaganda against China and recognise its socialist achievements since 1949.
However, shocked by Beijing's U-turn in 1972 when it made unprincipled concessions to US and Japan imperialism while supporting repressive Third World governments at the expense of revolutionary movements in those countries, the Diaoyutai movement polarised into a Maoist stream which tailed after the Chinese ruling bureaucracy, and new left, anarchist and Trotskyist streams critical of it.
With a leadership of mixed social interests and agendas, the current second wave of the Diaoyutai movement is also heading in a nationalist direction, one far too crude and simplistic to address the main contradictions today. These Chinese activists campaign on the basis that the uninhibited Diaoyus belong to China because they were first claimed and administered by Chinese emperors (of the Ming Dynasty) in the 14th century. With the exception of those in Taiwan, they uncritically accept that Beijing is their representative in this fight and devote a lot of energy to calling on Beijing to take action against Tokyo.
While massive media coverage in Hong Kong did help raise public awareness of the Diaoyutai developments, the almost unanimous demands in the editorials of Chinese language newspapers (with the unsurprising exception of the three pro-Beijing mouthpieces) that Beijing to take firmer action also influenced public opinion in a nationalist direction. Some politicians and commentators even urged Beijing to send gunboats to the Diaoyus to repel the patrolling Japanese forces.
These problematic demands went largely unchallenged by the movement's leadership, which, except at the level of rhetoric, was unable to reconcile the apparent trust in Beijing and Beijing's refusal, since the early 1970s, to take action. Back then, while Beijing's discussions with Tokyo for a peace treaty were under way, Deng Xiaoping proclaimed that the issue of Diaoyutai could be shelved for as long as centuries, while urging Tokyo to join China in the exploitation of natural gas and oil reserves near the Diaoyus.
When Beijing's repression of campus protests to "defend Diaoyutai" did not undermine the movement leadership's trust in Beijing, considerable confusion and disorientation resulted in the Diaoyutai movement. The problem is magnified in Hong Kong where Beijing is on the other side of the fence on a different battle front — the fight for democracy in Hong Kong after it reverts to Chinese rule next July.
In Taiwan, pro-independence activists are tailing after Taiwan's ruling class on the issue, arguing that the Diaoyus belong to Taiwan, (through which they were long administered), while asserting a distinct Taiwanese identity in the process.
Popular response in Japan is more subdued, except for stunts by right-wing groups and the chauvinist positions propagated by the Japanese Communist Party. The right-wing outfits have repeatedly built lighthouses on the Diaoyus (in the late '80s, 1990 and in July this year) and, while their provocation has gone unchallenged by Tokyo, it never fails to seize on the actions to renew its claim to the islands.
For more than 20 years the JCP has uncritically accepted the ruling class's arguments that the Japanese emperors first claimed the islands. The JCP also sides with Tokyo in the latter's dispute with Russia over the Kurile islands north of Japan. As a socialist organisation, it fails miserably in identifying the real interests of the working people on these issues.
Beijing argues that the Diaoyus are "inviolable" territories of China, while Tokyo argues that they have always been Japan's. But the most that either can hope to establish is which of the two countries' ruling classes first successfully privatised the natural heritage and resources in or near these islands. It is not in the interests of the working people of China or Japan (or Taiwan) — to take sides with one against the other.
The real interests of the Chinese and Japanese people lie in establishing a mechanism of control that will enable them to democratically manage those resources for their common benefit. Constructing that mechanism will not be easy, but the alternative, offering the movement's support to one or the other ruling regime, will only lead the movements to a dead end.