{"id":1466,"date":"2010-10-31T03:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2015-02-18T00:20:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T05:20:41","slug":"diao-yu-tai-student-movement-recollection-40-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2010\/10\/diao-yu-tai-student-movement-recollection-40-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Diao Yu Tai Student Movement: Recollection 40 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently the territorial dispute over the Diao Yu Islands (or Diao Yu Tai in Chinese and Senkaku Islands in Japanese) have made front page news in newspapers.\u00a0 This dispute dates back to many years, and almost exactly 40 years ago this dispute led to a very widespread global Chinese student movement, known as the Diao Yu Tai or DYT Student Movement.\u00a0 From the very beginning of that DYT Student Movement, it was recognized that this is not just a minor territorial dispute between two countries, but it has much larger significance involving (1) the revival of Japanese militarism, (2) American imperialism and collusion with Japan to weaken China, as represented by the newly established People’s Republic of China, and (3) the weak and incompetent Republic of China government more interested in appeasing to the military interests of Japan and the U.S., instead of standing up for China’s national sovereignty.\u00a0 This article briefly summarizes the DYT Student Movement that began 40 years ago and discusses the true significance of the dispute over the Diao Yu Islands.
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Geographical Background:<\/strong> The Diao Yu Islands are a group of eight small uninhabited islands located about 120 miles northeast of Keelung, the northern-most city in Taiwan, and about 240 miles southwest of Okinawa which is part of the Okinawa Prefecture or Ryukyu Islands (or Liu Chiu Islands in Chinese).\u00a0 They are also about 240 miles east of the Chinese mainland.\u00a0 The largest of the Diao Yu Islands is only two miles long and less than one mile wide.\u00a0 The Diao Yu Islands are situated on the continental shelf of Taiwan, and are separated from the Ryukyu Islands by a deep underwater trench (over 3,000 feet deep).<\/p>\n

Historical Background: <\/strong>Records of the Diao Yu Islands in maps of China date back to as early as 1403.\u00a0 For about 300 years starting with 1532, records of many Chinese envoys sent by the Chinese emperor to Ryukyu Islands\u00a0 recorded the demarcation line between Chinese territories and the Ryukyu Islands, and in these records the Diao Yu Islands were always part of the Chinese territories.\u00a0 The reason for many envoys from China to the Ryukyu Islands was because that for many years during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the kings of the Ryukyu Kingdom pledged allegiance to the Chinese emperor as vassal and accepted titles from them.\u00a0 That was the case even after 1609 when a Japanese lord Shimazu Tadatsune invaded and defeated the Ryukyu king.\u00a0\u00a0 After that, the kings of the Ryukyus paid tribute to the Japanese shogun as well as to the Chinese emperor. \u00a0That is why there were a lot of envoys going between China and Ryukyu.[1]\u00a0 The Ryukyu kingdom was annexed by Japan as Ryukyu han or domain in 1872.\u00a0 In 1879, Ryukyu han was renamed Okinawa Prefecture by the Meiji (1868-1912) government of Japan.<\/p>\n

Because there is a lot of fish around these islands (as a matter of fact, the words “Diao Yu” mean “fishing” in Chinese), for many centuries Chinese fishermen, especially from nearby Taiwan, have used these islands as temporary resting areas or shelters, and have built wells, docks, and short-term living quarters on these islands.<\/p>\n

The First Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan took place in 1894-1895, primarily over Korea.\u00a0 China, weakened internally by the incompetent Qing government and externally by various colonial invasions, especially the Opium Wars with Great Britain, lost the war.\u00a0 In 1895, as part of the peace settlement, together with other concessions, China ceded to Japan the island of Taiwan and the Penghu Islands (also known as Pescadores, which are off the west coast of Taiwan), and paid Japan a total of 340,000,000 taels of silver, estimated by the Chinese scholar Jin Xide to be\u00a0 equivalent to (then) 510,000,000 Japanese yen or about 6.4 times the annual Japanese government revenue, and estimated by the Japanese scholar Ryoko lechika to be equivalent to (then) $21,000,000 (about one-third of the revenue of the Qing government) or about 320,000,000 Japanese yen, equivalent to two-and-half years of Japanese government revenue.[2]\u00a0 No matter which estimate is used, just the financial compensation alone was very severe.<\/p>\n

Since the Diao Yu Islands are part of Taiwan, they came under Japanese control when China ceded Taiwan to Japan.\u00a0 However, at the end of WWII when Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, Japan accepted the terms of the July 26, 1945 Potsdam Declaration [3] which cited the November 27, 1943 Cairo Declaration [4], which among other things stated that “all territories Japan has stolen from China, such as Manchuria (Dongbei), Formosa (Taiwan), and the Pescadores (Penghus), shall be restored to the Republic of China (ROC).”\u00a0 The Japanese Instrument of Surrender that was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, marking the official surrender of Japan also explicitly referred to the Potsdam Declaration.\u00a0 On all these three occasions of the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, the ROC was represented.\u00a0 Since the Diao Yu Islands have always been part of Taiwan, they now reverted back to under the control of China.<\/p>\n

We want to mention two other historical events that occurred during the period when Taiwan was under the control of Japan.\u00a0 One was a 1940 court case initiated by Okinawans on who has jurisdiction over the Diao Yu Islands, and after more than a year of investigation, a Tokyo court ruled that the Taiwan Province should have jurisdiction.\u00a0 Another was that before 1945, in order for fishermen to go near the Diao Yu Islands to fish, they had to obtain a permit from the Taiwan Province.<\/p>\n

The case was very clear and there shouldn’t have been any question about which country should have sovereignty over the Diao Yu Islands.\u00a0 However, the international political environment changed with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war over the Chinese Kuomintang Party.\u00a0 If it weren’t for the military support of the U.S. for Chiang Kai-shek’s government in Taiwan, Taiwan would have been united with the rest of China.<\/p>\n

True Significance of the Diao Yu Islands Issue: <\/strong>All of a sudden, China, instead of being an ally of the U.S., is now viewed as an arch enemy that needs to be weakened, isolated, and plotted against.\u00a0 On the other hand, Japan, the country that bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack and committed massive, unimaginable inhumane atrocities in China and all over Asia, is now considered an ally of the U.S. to plot against China.<\/p>\n

One of the first major manifestations of this new attitude occurred with the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan (commonly known as the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty), which was supposed\u00a0 to officially end WWII and to allocate compensation to Allied civilians and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes.\u00a0 This treaty was signed on September 8, 1951, and became effective on April 28, 1952.\u00a0 Fifty one countries participated in this conference, and 48 countries signed the treaty, which was basically drafted by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Yet, China, the country in which Japan stationed the most soldiers and the country that suffered the most at the hands of the Japanese military, was not even invited to the conference, with the excuse that it was not clear whether the PRC or the ROC should be invited to the conference.\u00a0 This omission was pointed out by the Soviet Union, one of the three countries who did not sign the treaty[5].\u00a0 The Soviet Union also pointed out, among other things, that the treaty did not provide any guarantees against the rise of Japanese militarism; that the treaty set up Japan as an American military base and draws Japan into a military coalition; that the draft treaty violated the rights of China to Taiwan and several other islands.<\/p>\n

Unlike the various previously mentioned documents associated with the surrender of Japan at the end of WWII that explicitly stated that Taiwan and other Chinese territories stolen from China by Japan should be returned to China, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty only said that Japan will relinquish those former Chinese territories, but did not explicitly say that they should be returned to China.\u00a0 This intentional twisting of history by the U.S. to the detriment of China has since been repeated on several occasions by U.S. senior government officials that the agreement was that Japan would give up their jurisdiction over Taiwan, Penghu, and other territories, but the receiving country of these territories was not specified. For example, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, co-author of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, said in 1955 “the treaty ceded Taiwan to no one; that Japan merely renounced sovereignty over Taiwan, and that America cannot, therefore, admit that the disposition of Taiwan is merely an internal problem of China.”\u00a0 Therefore, as early as 1951, it was already fairly clear about the imperialistic intention of the U.S. toward China and their planting the seed to ally with Japan to contain and weaken China.<\/p>\n

In spite of the fact that neither PRC nor ROC was invited to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, a similar Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Taipei) was signed by the ROC and Japan on April 28, 1952, the same day as the effective day of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.\u00a0 This Treaty of Taipei is basically the same as the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty except for the added statement that “ethnic Chinese residents of the islands of Taiwan and Penghu and their descendants were regarded as having Chinese nationality,” but still did not explicitly say that Taiwan and other Chinese territories stolen from China by Japan should be returned to China.\u00a0 The fact that the Treaty of Taipei was concluded so quickly and the fact that it essentially mirrored the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty strongly suggest that the chief orchestrator of this development was the U.S.\u00a0 The fact that the Treaty of Taipei did not explicitly say that Taiwan and other Chinese territories stolen from China by Japan should be returned to China also strongly suggests that the ROC government was weak and more interested in gaining the support of the U.S., and to a lesser extent Japan, than to defend the territorial sovereignty of China.<\/p>\n

Another major manifestation to contain and weaken China occurred in 1969-1972.\u00a0 When the U.S. and Japan negotiated the transfer of control of the Ryukyu Islands to Japan from the U.S. [6], they included the Senkaku Islands (i.e., the Diao Yu Islands) as part of the Ryukyu Islands!\u00a0 Both the PRC and the ROC objected to this agreement and argued that this agreement did not determine the ultimate sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands.\u00a0 Included in the reversion agreements was an arrangement that Japan would assume the responsibility for the air, ground and maritime defense of the Islands not later than July 1, 1973.\u00a0\u00a0 As part of the agreement, Japan agreed to deploy A Nike group (3 batteries), a Hawk group (4 batteries) and appropriate supporting troops to Okinawa to carry on the surface-to-air missile role in the Air Defense Mission.\u00a0 Additionally Japan agreed to buy the U.S. equipment\u00a0 located on Ryukyu Islands.\u00a0 From this agreement it is clear that the U.S. planned to team up with a re-militarized Japan to contain and weaken China.<\/p>\n

Besides the political motive for including the Diao Yu Islands as part of the Ryukyu Islands handed over to Japan, there was also an economic reason for this U.S.-Japan collusion.\u00a0 In 1969, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) published a report that indicated the possibility of large reserves of oil in the vicinity of the Diao Yu Islands.<\/p>\n

The Global Diao Yu Tai\u00a0 Student Movement of 1970+: <\/strong>Starting in 1969, Japan not only stepped up its claim that Diao Yu Islands belong to Japan, Japan also sent troops to the islands to set up boundary markers, sent patrol boats to chase away Taiwan fishermen that have been fishing near these islands for centuries, and even tore down the ROC flag on the Diao Yu Islands.\u00a0 Furthermore, the Diao Yu Islands issue is not an isolated example of Japan not acknowledging the grave mistakes it made in the past and at the same time embarking on a path of revived Japanese militarism so that it can once again embark on new imperialistic pursuits.\u00a0 This is so clearly seen by the fact that (1) Japan still has not officially apologized for the massive inhumane atrocities it committed in Asia during WWII, (2) Japan has continued to deny the existence of atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre and sex slaves, (3) senior Japanese leaders have continued to pay tributes at the Yasukuni Shrine where many Class A War Criminals are enshrined, and (4) Japan has rewritten history by removing from their students’ textbooks such historical accounts.<\/p>\n

As also mentioned in the previous section, since 1969, the U.S. has included the Diao Yu Islands as part of the Ryukyu Islands whose control was transferred to Japan on March 15, 1972.\u00a0 Furthermore, several U.S. senior government officials have made statements that even the status of Taiwan and other Chinese territories given up by Japan after the end of WWII may be up in the air.\u00a0 In spite of turning over administrative control of the Diao Yu Islands to Japan as part of the Ryukyu Islands, the U.S. has adopted at least publicly an ambiguous position regarding the territorial sovereignty of the Diao Yu Islands by acknowledging that this could be an issue of dispute.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the U.S. has also repeatedly said that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the U.S. and Japan would be applicable if China makes a military move on the Diao Yu Islands, meaning that the U.S. would defend Japan.\u00a0 In spite of its internal inconsistency, that has been the official position of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

From the Chinese perspective, since the Diao Yu Islands are part of the Taiwan Province, it is under the jurisdiction of the ROC, and not the PRC.\u00a0 Again, as already mentioned in the previous section in the discussion of the 1952 Treaty of Taipei, the ROC government has been more interested in gaining the military, political, and economic support of the U.S., and to a lesser extent the political and economic support of Japan, than to defend the territorial sovereignty of China.\u00a0 Even when her own fishermen are being chased away by Japanese patrol boats from islands they have fished nearby for centuries and their national flag has been torn down, the ROC government did not lodge strong protest to Japan, but basically said that there is not much they could do since the Diao Yu Islands are under the administrative control of the U.S., or Japan after March 15, 1972.\u00a0 An example of the ROC government’s attitude and action is so well illustrated when the Vice President of the ROC, Mr. Yen Chia-kan, was asked by Japan to go see the Japanese Emperor on July 7, 1970 in negotiating a $200 million loan from Japan to Taiwan.\u00a0 Anyone who is knowledgeable about the Second Sino-Japanese War would know that it was on July 7, 1937 that Japan created the Marco Polo Bridge incident outside of Beijing as an excuse for a full-blown invasion of China.\u00a0 To the Chinese the date of July 7 is similar to the date of December 7 to the Americans.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Vice President Yen went to see the Japanese Emperor on July 7.\u00a0 After the meeting, the Japanese government said that “because of the dispute over the Diao Yu Islands, we have to rethink about the loan,” meaning that if we get the Diao Yu Islands, then we can discuss about the loan.<\/p>\n

Seeing that China’s national sovereignty on the one hand is being infringed externally by an imperialistic U.S. and its ally a re-militarized and aggressive Japan, and on the other hand is not being defended internally by a weak and incompetent ROC government, the overseas Chinese students established a grass-roots Chinese student movement that rapidly spread essentially to all parts of the globe.\u00a0 The earliest call to action was probably around October 1970 from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey and the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.\u00a0 But quickly “ad hoc defend Diao Yu Tai action committees” were established in numerous college campuses in the U.S., Canada, HK, Europe, Taiwan, and other parts of the world.\u00a0 A global network of such action committees was established (even though this was about 10 years before the existence of commercial email and 20 years before the existence of commercial Internet), and a world-wide Chinese student movement, called the Diao Yu Tai (DYT) Student Movement, was established.<\/p>\n

Several large scale demonstrations occurred in many cities across the globe.\u00a0 From the very beginning, the DYT Student Movement had three protest targets:<\/p>\n