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作者： 洪健昭 ( 2007年9月14日 16:50)
關鍵字：Tiaoyutai Islands ROC sovereignty Taiwan-Japan relations

There seems to be an international conspiracy to make the Tiaoyutai Islands part of Japanese territory.The Japanese call them the Senkaku Islands, while the Chinese use pinyin to spell their name Diaoyudai, which like Tiaoyutai in its Wade-Gile Romanization means Fishermen’s Platform.Taiwan and China claim sovereignty over the group of eight islets, the biggest of them being familiarly known among local fishermen as Burinduo or No Man’s Island in Hoklo.

One telltale piece of evidence attesting to the conspiracy is Beijing forbidding activists in Hong Kong to make an annual pilgrimmage to the islands to demand that Japan return them to China.Technically, however, the activists, some of them from Taiwan and elsewhere, were forbidden to leave for Diaoyudai because their ship operating license was suspended.The truth, however, is that the Chinese authorities don’t want to irritate the Japanese who have Maritime Safety cutters patrol off Senkaku to stake out what they claim is their territory.Beijing certainly doesn’t want any activist to be drowned like David Chan in September 1996.Chan jumped overboard when his protest ship, blocked by a Japanese flotilla, was unable to reach the islets.

Beijing is beginning a honeymoon with Tokyo after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Chinese President Hu Jintao almost a year ago.It is understandable that Hu wants no flare-up over Diaoyudai with Japan, but Taipei appears to have tacitly given up sovereignty over the islands which are registered officially as part of the county of Yilan, though no man lives there.

As a matter of fact, Taiwan has a better claim to No Man’s Island.It was part of Qing China, according to a draft treaty between Beijing and Tokyo shortly before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. The island group belonged to Taiwan, which had just been made a province.The treaty was not signed, and Taiwan, along with the Pescadores and Tiaoyutai, was ceded to Japan in 1895. While ruling Taiwan, the Japanese took away the Tiaoyutai fishing rights from the Okinawans and awarded them to the fishermen of the then prefecture of Taihoku (Taipei), which included present-day Yilan county. When Taiwan and the Pescadores were restored to the Republic of China at the end of the Second World War in 1945, the government in Nanjing considered Tiaoyutai was included in the deal, but no official claim was made because it was then under American military control.

The United States returned Okinawa to Japan in 1962, and fishermen in Yilan continued to fish off No Man’s Island with little trouble until the early 1970s when huge undersea oil reserves were detected there.Tiaoyutai has become a territorial issue between Taiwan and Japan.China began to stake its claim after Japan abolished its peace treaty with Taipei in 1972 to recognize Beijing.

Taiwan’s Coastguard Administration appears reluctant to confront Japanese patrols over Tiaoyutai, where Yilan fishermen now often get caught for “intrusion” into Japanese “territorial waters.”Activists have been forbidden to make any protest trips there, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs abolished its office in Naha as an independent mission. Don’t forget the Republic of China, which ended the Manchu Qing Dynasty in 1912, has never acknowledged the kingdom of the Ryukyus as Japan’s prefecture of Okinawa.Taipei’s mission in Naha is now under control of the Office in Tokyo of the East Asian Relations Association like a consulate under an embassy.

Former President Lee Teng-hui declared Tiayutai belongs to Japan.President Chen Shui-bian has yet to make a similar declaration.

（本文刊載於96.09.10 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）

• 洪健昭

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