Japan is prone to doing the wrong thing at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Tokyo has done it again. Its defense ministry recently decided to conduct a joint exercise with the U.S. Pacific Command in a scenario composed of retaking a remote southwestern island, which, of course, is none other than one of the Senkaku Islands over which both Taiwan and the People's Republic of China claim sovereignty. On the heels of the planned sea maneuver over waters near what were once known as the Tiaoyutai Islands in Chinese, Japanese coastguardsmen arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat and his crew for intruding into Japan's territorial waters near the disputed islands and obstruction of their discharge of public duties last Tuesday. On the same day, the Japanese also seized two Taiwanese boats on intrusion charges. They were both released after fines had been paid, however.
The Chinese were not so lucky. The skipper, Zhan Qixiong, has been held in detention until the Japanese court at Naha decides to prosecute him. Beijing demanded that Zhan, as well as his ship and crew be released at once. China also decided to postpone talks on the East China Sea issue with Japan to deepen a diplomatic spat, which is expected to escalate as newspapers and activists across China are calling for retaliation against the “Land of the Rising Sun” whose invasion army occupied more than a quarter of the Chinese mainland during World War II.
Tokyo seems unmoved. Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said it was regrettable that his Chinese counterpart summoned Japanese ambassador Uichiro Niwa to hear Beijing's protest. Then Okada added: “We are only taking proper steps based on law because there was an alleged obstruction of public duties in our territorial waters.” The Japanese Coast Guard said Zhan could be released if he accepts the allegation that he obstructed public duties, resulting in the collision of his ship with two patrol vessels, and pays a fine. Otherwise, Zhan will stand trial.
Unlike our fishing boat skippers from Taiwan, Zhan will never admit to an “illegal intrusion” as China claims the Tiaoyutais are part of its indisputable and traditional territory. Beijing wouldn't let him, even if he wanted to. That means he will be tried and convicted, unless Tokyo has a change of mind and sends him back home to China.
Japanese officials are really very forgetful. They had to have known that their row with China would almost certainly get out of hand when the Chinese begin to rouse the anti-Japanese sentiments on the eve of the anniversary of the Mukden Incident of 1931. On Sept. 18, seventy-nine years ago, the Japanese Kwantung Army attacked a Chinese infantry battalion in Shenyang, or Mukden, to kick off Japan's campaign against China. At the end of the incident, former Qing emperor Henry Aisin-Gioro Puyi was smuggled out of Beijing to remount his ancestral throne in Manchuria as Japan's puppet. China's Manchurian army was ousted from home, joined Chiang Kai-shek in fighting Mao Zedong at Yenan, and then kidnapped the generalissimo in December 1936. Chiang was released after he had agreed to form a united front against Japanese aggression. A little more than half a year later, on July 7, Japan started its undeclared war on China, which became part of World War II after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Taiwan won't raise any outcry against the seizure of the two boats and the fining of their skippers. Activists who are calling for joint action for the “protection of the Tiaoyutais” with their Hong Kong and Chinese counterparts have been quietly discouraged by the authorities from sailing to the disputed islets a mere 120 miles northeast of Keelung. In the end, one fishing boat with a couple of Taiwanese activists aboard sailed to the Tiaoyutais yesterday. But even with Taiwan, the Japanese had to apologize and pay compensation for the sinking of a Taiwanese leisure fishing boat off the Senkaku Islands shortly after Ma Ying-jeou, a one time Tiaoyutai warrior, had been sworn in as president. What can Japan do to cope with its giant angry neighbor?
Tokyo can't afford to fight with China now, just like at the end of 1941 when it chose to attack Hawaii despite knowing it could never win a war with the United States. Zhan's trial has to be avoided, lest it mark a point of no return in worsening relations between Japan and the PRC.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於99.09.15，The China Post 4版）
楊朝祥
(
2018年4月24日 08:19
)
王順民
(
11月22日 15:22
)
劉新圓
(
2007年10月4日 15:04
)
