(圖片來源：Wikimedia Commons, Information Technology Agreement parties.)
Official Taipei is heaving a collective sigh of relief as despite its flip-flop, what promised to be a Tiaoyutai crisis is coming to an abrupt end.The Japanese have officially apologized for a collision between their maritime safety frigate and a Taiwan leisure fishing boat, which sank off the Tiaoyutai Islands on June 10, and undertaken to pay reparations.
In a diplomatic melee over the incident, President Ma Ying-jeou came out to demand an open apology and compensation for the Lien Ho, the fishing boat whose skipper Ho Hung-yi was detained by Japanese maritime safety authorities for questioning as a defendant for two days.On Ma’s demand, Ho was released.As the Japanese didn’t offer the apology, a protest ship sailed for the disputed waters off the Tiaoyutais, over which Japan claims sovereignty, with a heavy National Coast Guard escort.Tokyo officially “regretted” for their intrusion into the Japanese territorial waters.Koh Se-kai was fired as Taipei’s de facto ambassador to Japan after he had been called back from Tokyo to report on the Tiaoyutai accident.Premier Liu Chao-schiuan was forced by jingoist lawmakers to reiterate what Ma said as a Tiaoyutai warrior in his youth.Ma said in the early 1970s he would go to war with Japan to defend the eight islets, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese.Parliamentary hawks organized a voyage to the Tiaoyutais aboard a Navy Lafayette frigate, which was called off at the last moment.Thereupon Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda called for calm and declared in Tokyo the incident should be dealt with rationally and cool-headedly, while Ma told the press in a tea reception in Taipei he fully agreed.
On Friday, Hitoshi Funamachi, Japan’s deputy representative in Taipei, visited the Lien Ho skipper in Juifang to present a letter of apology from Hideo Nasu, commander of District 11 of the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency.Nasu, whose command at Naha supervises coast guard patrols of the Ryukyu or Okinawa Islands, offered an official apology to Ho and promised reparations.In the meantime, Tadashi Ikeda, Tokyo’s representative or de facto ambassador in Taipei, called on Francisco Ou, minister of foreign affairs, to apologize for the incident and reiterate Japan’s readiness for compensation.
It’s the first apology Japan has ever offered for an untold number of skirmishes between Taiwan fishermen and Japanese coastguardsmen over Tiaoyutai waters, under which lie vast gas and oil resources waiting to be tapped.The Japanese never failed to arrest Taiwan fishermen and fined them for trespassing.A few fishing boats sank or were sunk.A Tiaoyutai warrior from Hong Kong died trying to land on the largest islet of the small archipelago.No apology was made.
The Japanese signed a fishery agreement in 1997 with China, which also claims sovereign status over what it calls the Diaoyutais (pinyin spelling of Tiaoyutais.)The agreement makes the waters 12 miles off the Diaoyutais or Senkakus off-limits to fisheries.Taiwan isn’t a signatory, of course, albeit those waters are a traditional fishing ground for its fishermen.Chinese fishermen haven’t tried to reach as far as the Diaoyutais, while Okinawan fishermen were once forbidden by the Japanese to fish over the waters now under dispute.A Tokyo high court awarded the fishing rights to the prefecture of Taihoku (Taipei) after a long litigation, while Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945.
That is why Japan ignores Taiwan’s sovereignty claim and has been patrolling the waters around the Senkakus as part of its territory in earnest since 1997.Taipei has acquiesced to Japanese control over the Tiaoyutais, agreeing to forbid Taiwan ships to enter the 12-mile off-limits zone.In an exclusive interview with the Okinawa Times on September 24, 2002, former President Lee Teng-hui said the Senkakus belong to Japan, because China has never stationed any troops on the Diaoyutais.Asked about the dispute over fishing rights, Lee pointed out Taiwan fishermen were instigated by Chinese in Hong Kong to cause clashes over the islets and he had to order warships to “quash (Taiwanese) protests,” while he was in office.Ho Hung-yi wasn’t purposely entering that zone, when the Japanese patrol ship rammed into and sank his fishing boat.As a matter of fact, the Lien Ho, which was carrying 13 deep-sea anglers, rightfully claimed an innocent passage, which the Japanese finally had to tacitly acknowledge.
Why, then, would the Japanese humble themselves this time?
For one thing, Japan doesn’t want to further antagonize Taiwan, its friendliest of countries in Asia that is beginning a rapprochement with China.Tokyo and Beijing struck a deal to jointly develop gas fields in the East China Sea, while Japan was still embroiled in the Tiaoyutai row.After four years of on-and-off talks, Asia’s two largest economies agreed to share the potentially lucrative gas resources from an area that lies near islands which remain a focus of bitter dispute.In the meantime, the Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait reached a tentative agreement to jointly develop gas and oil resources in the sea basin off Swatow in China and another closer to Taiwan.The Japanese do not want Taipei to cozy up with Beijing too much to the detriment of their enormous East China Sea interests.It is in Tokyo’s interest to keep Taipei-Beijing relations in a hostile stalemate; and the Japanese know full well that Taiwan, if provoked by their intransigence over the Senkakus, may lean further to China to join in a united front against Japan.They realize that saber-rattling won’t quell Taiwan’s public uproar against the Japanese outrage over the Tiaoyutais and subjugate a so far sycophantically tame Taipei.The only option was to pocket their pride to save the situation.
Though favorable to Taiwan, this new turn in the situation does not strengthen Taipei’s hands in talks on fishing rights over the disputed waters.Taiwan wants to sign a fishery agreement or arrangement with Japan to end its fishermen’s predicament once and for all.Japan doesn’t want an extra agreement.Nor does China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province to be forced back to its fold by force, if necessary.Moreover, the extra agreement means a weakening of Japan’s claim of sovereignty over the Senkakus, which is of vital importance to the access to their undersea gas and oil supplies.China may not want fishing rights but is intent on tapping the huge energy reserves.Tokyo may agree to jointly develop them with China but hates Taiwan cutting in for a share.Many a Tiaoyutai crisis lies in store for the new Kuomintang administration.
（本文刊載於97.06.23 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
王順民
(
11月22日 15:13
)
劉新圓
(
2007年10月4日 15:04
)
