No one knows for sure who fired a shot near the Marco Polo Bridge in suburban Beijing on the night of July 7, 1937. But that shot started an undeclared war between China and Japan, which became part of World War II after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 8 four years later.
A rifle company of the Japanese garrison in Beijing conducted an exercise that night. The company commander found a soldier was missing, so he led his company to the nearby town of Wanping where he demanded the Chinese garrison to let his troops in to find the missing soldier. The Chinese refused to let them in, and while the two sides were arguing, someone fired the fateful shot. The fighting expanded, but a ceasefire agreement was reached and signed afterward. It was Chiang Kai-shek who decided to fight against the Japanese invasion much later at a Kuomintang conference in Lushan. Incidentally, Japan could legitimately station troops in Beijing in accordance with the Convention of Peking signed in 1900 after an eight-nation allied army had occupied the Chinese capital. In an absurd turn of events, however, the missing soldier was found not in Wanping. It was discovered that he had temporarily gone AWOL to relieve himself.
Sometimes wars break out by accident.
The escalating tension between Japan and China over the disputed islands of Senkaku or Diaoyu is drawing up a scenario for another war by accident, which no one wants. Despite its saber-rattling, China doesn't want to fight. Neither does Japan; although the country is now headed by hawkish nationalist Shinzo Abe. Nor does Taiwan, which is a third claimant to what it calls the Diaoyutai Islands. Washington, which has a security treaty with Tokyo, is trying what it can not to get involved in the row over the eight uninhabited islets.
But as the Chinese are sending Shannxi Y-8 multi-role cargo planes, intelligence gathering aircraft, J-7 inteRCEPtors and J-10 fighters into Japan's Air Defense Identification Zone over the Senkakus, while Japanese F-15s have to scramble to keep an eye on them, the chances are that an innocent firing of a warning shot may touch off a dogfight that may, like the shot fired near the Marco Polo Bridge, compel the two countries to fight another full-fledged war.
While China was sending its maritime surveillance vessels near Diaoyu Island, no skirmish was possible, but Japanese warning shots may easily be mistaken for an attack on the Y-8s and warplanes, whose pilots are most likely to hit back in self-defense. That is the risk Japan now runs after its Defense Minister Itsunon Onodera made it known that Japanese fighter pilots may be ordered to fire warning shots at intruding Chinese aircraft.
It is fully in line with international law to fire radio or warning shots at intruding foreign aircraft. But tracers may also be used. Firing tracers, which usually contain phosphorous or some highly flammable material, sends a line of light through the air like a laser. They are usually loaded in about every tenth round to let gunners know where they are shooting, but if fired at Chinese Y-8s, their pilots may think they are being fired upon. The Y-8 is not an ordinary cargo plane. It is equipped with a weapons system. It has two heavy guns and three heavy machine guns, and is capable of fighting back. It goes without saying that the J-7s and the J-10s can match Japan's American-made F-15s.
Dogfights, however, won't lead to war if China and Japan practice restraint. But the anti-Japanese sentiment in China and the equally anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan may force Beijing and Tokyo to make war, despite their leaders trying to do what they can to avoid it.
If the hostilities begin, what will Taiwan do? That is a very tough question to answer. Shall it join the war? Shall it support Japan and the United States? Or shall it help the People's Republic? None of these courses of action are appropriate. The only option open to Taiwan may be the one Qing China was forced upon in 1904.
Japan declared war on Tsarist Russia on Feb. 8, and ground battles were fought mostly in Southern Manchuria, particularly the Liaotong Peninsula and Mukden, the capital of Abahai before the Manchu Jurchens captured Beijing and founded the Great Qing Empire in 1644. Qing China had to declare neutrality in the Russo-Japanese War and let the Japanese and the Russians turn its inherent territory of Southern Manchuria into their theater of war. China, at the bottom of its dynastic decline, was cornered into a predicament of allowing two foreign countries to fight a land war on its territory.
What else could Taiwan do should a war between China and Japan break out by accident like in 1937? The likeliest official response would probably be an iteration of Taiwan's sovereignty over the Diaoyutais, which are under Japanese administrative control, and another reiteration of its oft-repeated call for peace in the East China Sea.
There is an alternative. If an accidental war should break out, the government can call a plebiscite asking all members of the electorate to vote directly on how Taiwan should respond, with a warning that they may have to pocket their pride of their homeland as an independent sovereign country, in exchange for the protection of their national interests.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於102.01.22, The China Post）
王順民
(
11月22日 15:13
)
劉新圓
(
2007年10月4日 15:04
)
