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Why should we discuss a Chinese student movement that occurred 50 years ago?

• Just exactly what was the issue 50 years ago?
• What is that student movement?
• Why is it important?
• Why is it important for the American people, as well as for the people of the world?
• More importantly, why is it even more important today than 50 years ago?

Ten years ago in 2010, I posted in this website a long article “Diao Yu Tai Student Movement: Recollection 40 Years Later” [1] . In this 50-year recollection article I will answer the above questions by extracting key summaries from the previous article and updating the discussion to take into account more recent events.

What Is the Issue?

The issue is the ownership of a set of small islands, called Diao Yu Tai (or Diao Yu Islands) in Chinese and Senkaku Islands in Japanese, in the East China Sea that is claimed by both China and Japan, and since the 1950s the official position of the U.S. government is that the territorial sovereignty of these islands is undecided, but the administrative rights of these islands were handed over in 1970 as part of the Ryukyu Islands (also known as Okinawa) by the U.S. to Japan. Although the U.S. states that these islands’ territorial sovereignty is undecided, it has also repeatedly said that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the U.S. and Japan would be applicable, thus leading to the possibility of war over these islands between the U.S. and China.

Historical and Legal Status of These Islands

Records of the Diao Yu Islands date back in maps of China to as early as 1403. 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 Ryukyu Islands, and the water deepens significantly beyond the Diao Yu Islands heading toward the Ryukyu Islands.

During all these years Chinese fishermen had been fishing around these islands and also used them as temporary shelters. For several centuries the demarcation between the Ryukyu Kingdom and China always put the Diao Yu Islands as part of Taiwan, a province of China.

As the result of the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894 when China was defeated by Japan, China ceded the island of Taiwan to Japan, as well as paying a huge sum of money (equivalent to 6.4 times the annual Japanese government revenue or two-and-half years of Japanese government revenue depending on whose estimate). However, at the end of WWII, Japan accepted the terms of the July 26, 1945 Potsdam Declaration [2] which cited the November 27, 1943 Cairo Declaration [3] that stated that “all territories Japan has stolen from China, such as Manchuria and Taiwan shall be restored to the Republic of China (ROC).” The Japanese Instrument of Surrender that was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945 also explicitly referred to the Potsdam Declaration. On all these three occasions of the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, the ROC was represented.

It is perfectly clear historically and legally that the Diao Yu Islands belong to China, as part of the Taiwan Province. More information on this part of history can be found in Reference 1.

What Changed in the 1950s?

The case was very clear and there shouldn’t have been any question about which country should have sovereignty over the Diao Yu Islands. 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. 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.

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.  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.

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  to officially end WWII.  This treaty was signed on September 8, 1951, and became effective on April 28, 1952.  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.  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.

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.  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 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.”  The PRC denounced the treaty and stated that it was illegal and should not be recognized.

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.

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.  This Treaty of Taipei is basically the same as the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, and it did not say that Taiwan and other Chinese territories stolen from China by Japan should be returned to China.  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.  The fact that the Treaty of Taipei did not 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.

Who were representing or speaking for the Chinese?  Furthermore, as the sole administrator under the U.N. of the Ryukyu Islands, the U.S. on December 25,1953 made the unilateral decision to include the Diao Yu Islands for the first time in the territory of the Ryukyu Islands, whose administrative control is scheduled to be handed over by the U.S. to Japan in March 1972. [4]  The above described complicities by the U.S. helped to create a dispute which should not have existed in the first place.

More information on the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the 1952 Treaty of Taipei can be found in Reference 1.

What Triggered the Diao Yu Tai Student Movement in 1970?

In 1970, the U.S. and Japan were planning for the transfer to Japan of the administrative control of the territory of the Ryukyu Islands which since the 1953 unilateral decision of the U.S. included the Diao Yu Islands, both the PRC and the ROC objected to this agreement and argued that this agreement did not determine the sovereignty of the Diao Yu Islands. At that time, Japan and the U.S. had even more incentive to want to claim the Diao Yu Islands because within the previous few years, it was found that vast resources of oil could be under the area around these islands. 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.

When the oversea Chinese students heard about this, a grass-roots movement started and quickly spread around the world. It began in the fall of 1970 at Princeton University and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Quickly grass root organizations sprang up like new grass after a cool night of constant rain following a dry summer. For example, a Baodiao (or Protest Diao Yu Islands) organization was established at the University of California at Berkeley by early December 1970. Similar organizations sprang up overnight in many universities across the U.S., as well as in Europe, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, and other parts of Asia and the world. What was remarkable was that these organizations separated in distance by hundreds or thousands of miles kept in constant touch with each other keeping in mind that that was several years before email became available and about a decade before the invention of the Internet.

This grass roots student movement energized Chinese students all over the world. Many of these student leaders labored days and nights educating themselves, putting on discussion meetings, organizing, producing newsletters providing background information on the issues, spreading the message to the media and local communities beyond the campuses (including buying a full-page ad in the May 23, 1971 issue of the New York Times), producing educational plays and musicals, and organizing protest rallies. Many were willing to sacrifice their studies and careers on the movement, and many ended up doing so. For those who did so, most of them did not regret and have not regretted when looking back many years later.

This movement has three targets:

1. The Japanese government for wanting to steal more, although they haven’t even acknowledged the thefts, murders, and atrocities they committed all over Asia against the Chinese people and other people of the world.
2. The U.S. government’s interventions in the internal affairs of other countries and its unfair and imperialistic policy to surround, isolate, and weaken China, and to use Japan as its Asian pawn in this containment policy of China.
3. The ROC government in Taiwan for not standing up to defend the interest of the Chinese people, and instead more interested in gaining the support of the U.S., and to a lesser extent Japan, than to defend the territorial sovereignty of China.

The PRC government’s position has been consistently clear that the Diao Yu Islands belong to China. However, because those islands are part of the Taiwan Province, which was under the control of the ROC, the PRC government’s hands around the time of 1970 are partially tied in what they could do to protect the Diao Yu Islands from the infringement of Japan and the U.S.

Mirroring the Massive May 4, 1919 Chinese Student Movement

The famous May 4 Movement of 1919, which was initiated by Chinese students to protest against the grossly unfair treatment that the 1919 Versailles Treaty that ended WWI. Instead of returning the Shangdong Province to China after Germany was defeated in WWI, it was handed over to Japan. But instead of protecting the interest of the Chinese people and its country, the weak Chinese government was ready to acquiesce to the decision of Versailles. That so enraged the Chinese students that they burned the house of the minister of communications and assaulted China’s minister to Japan, both pro-Japanese officials. The slogans of the May 4 Movement were “Resist Foreign Powers” and “Rid Internal Traitors.” The student-led May 4 Movement quickly spread to workers, merchants, and businessmen and became a massive nationwide movement, and led to the Chinese representatives walking out of the Versailles Conference.

Although the May 4 Movement did not manage to achieve all their objectives as evident by the handing over of Shangdong Province to Japan, the movement did result in successes, such as the ability of China’s various social classes to successfully collaborate, an ideal that would be admired by both Nationalists and Communists. Furthermore, the May 4 Movement sparked national protests and marked the upsurge of Chinese nationalism, a shift towards political mobilization and away from cultural activities, and a move towards populist base rather than intellectual elites.

The Diao Yu Tai Movement that was initiated in 1970 used the above slogans as its guiding principle: “Resist Foreign Powers” and “Rid Internal Traitors.” The reason for the second part of that slogan is already clearly seen by how the ROC government immediately signed the Treaty of Taipei that mirrored the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treat. As another example, we only have to look at how the ROC government tried to snuff out the big Diao Yu Tai Movement’s protest rally in San Francisco on April 9, 1971. They wrote bad-mouth slogans on the student leaders on the fences of Portsmouth Square, site of the rally, and hired local youth gangs to try to disrupt that protest rally. Fortunately, the rally organizers were well prepared and its security people took care of the disrupting youth gangs and handed them over to local police.

Similar to the May 4, 1919 Student Movement, the Diao Yu Tai Movement of 1970 also has not yet achieved its objective of the Diao Yu Islands returning to Chinese sovereignty.  However, it did achieve a major step toward that goal.  The movement played a crucial role in persuading the U.S. government to adopt a position that although it was transferring the administrative rights of the Ryukyu Islands over to Japan, the territorial sovereignty of those islands is still to be determined. [5]  Furthermore, it led the students not to be confined to the ivory tower, but to the workers and the community. It also expanded the students’ horizon to choose majors beyond science and engineering which were the majors of the majority of their predecessors, but to also social and political studies. It led them not just focus on intellectual pursuits, but also to social and political activism. These student leaders became involved in the movement when they were in the 20s, and some times in the early 30s. Many of them continue to be involved in various social and political activities for many years, including to their senior years.

Why Is the Diao Yu Island Movement Important for the American People?

Americans always claim to be standing on the side of justice. In the case of the Diao Yu Islands, it is crystally clear that China has always had and should continue to have sovereignty over the Diao Yu Islands.

Americans should not want to be dragged into a war with China in the East China Sea that has no moral or legal reasons to be involved. When the U.S. government has repeatedly stated that the territorial sovereignty of the Diao Yu Islands still needs to be determined, why should the U.S. government claim that the Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan should be applied to these islands? It is an obvious inconsistent policy that is based on the premise to weaken China and to use Japan as its pawn in that policy.

Yes, China has become the U.S.’s major competitor. On the one hand, we should let the two sides compete fairly. On the other hand, there are many important and urgent world-wide issues such as the pandemic, global warming, poverty, war and peace, and nuclear disarmament that the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies and most powerful countries, should collaborate with each other and with other countries to solve these critical issues. Otherwise, we may not have a planet to live in and survive.

Why Is This Movement Even More Important Now?

All the reasons just discussed in the previous session are still applicable. The U.S. is not on the side of justice in the case of the Diao Yu Islands. The dispute over the Diao Yu Islands may very well trigger a major war involving China and the U.S. that has no moral or legal basis.

With recent events, those and other reasons become even more important.

The U.S.’s reputation as a responsible world leader has fallen significantly in the last few years. President Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement as the world is experiencing warmer climate, melting ice caps, more coastal flooding, more forest fires and violent storms. President Trump has also just withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO) as the world is facing a huge global pandemic, the worst one for at least the past 100 years. If we are the best and most powerful country in the world, then let’s work together with the world and lead the world to solve these problems.

Instead on focusing on solving the many grave problems faced by the U.S. due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant economic collapse, the U.S. government is using a scapegoat, China, for its failures. We need to be brave enough and honest enough to admit that we contributed to these problems, instead of blaming all these problems on the Chinese. The best strategy to solve the pandemic is to work together globally to solve the pandemic because it is a global pandemic in a world that is intimately interconnected, and the virus does not recognize state or national boundaries.

Yes, China is the U.S.’s major competitor. As stated earlier, on the one hand, let’s compete with each other fairly. On the other hand, let’s see how we can grow the pie together. In the current world where countries are interconnected via fast planes, fast trains, and instant communications virtually through emails and the Internet, isolating ourselves via restrictive trade policies or restrictive virtual inter-connectivity is going to shrink the pie, and definitely is not going to grow the pie.

We also need to be more willing to share the pie, both domestically and globally. It cannot be continued that 10% of the U.S. population own 90% of the wealth of the U.S. Similarly, 10% of the people of the world cannot continue to own 90% of the wealth of the world. Otherwise, we will face continued turmoil both domestically and globally. We must find new ways to work together to grow the pie and to share the pie.

U.S. has already been involved in several questionable wars. Our country cannot afford another questionable war. We cannot afford it from a moral perspective, and we cannot afford it from a world leadership perspective. Furthermore, even from a purely economic perspective, we cannot afford it, because wars are costly and extremely destructive.

It is not an exaggeration that our children and grandchildren may be living in a world that will turn out to be much worse than our current world. With global pandemic, global warming, global poverty, and global arms competition, whether we will still have a livable planet 100 years from now is an alarming question. Countries of the world must work collaboratively to solve these big problems.

[1] “Diao Yu Tai Student Movement: Recollection 40 Years Later”: http://www.dontow.com/2010/10/diao-yu-tai-student-movement-recollection-40-years-later/.

[2] The Potsdam Declaration was signed by President Harry S. Truman of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China.

[3] The Cairo Declaration was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China.

[4] For more information on the significance of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute for the American People, see http://www.dontow.com/2013/03/significance-of-the-diaoyusenkaku-islands-dispute-for-the-american-people/.

[5] Playing a crucial role in that persuasion was the Diao Yu Tai student movement’s lobbying efforts with the U.S. Senate that culminated in a key testimony in front of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate on October 29, 1971 by representatives on behalf of the student movement. In particular, the representatives included Professor C. N. Yang (Physics Nobel Laureate), Professor S. B. Woo, and others. The end result was that a paragraph on Committee Action and a paragraph on Committee Comments were included in the Senate Executive Report No. 92-10, November 2, 1971 that read in part (see p. 5) “United States action in transferring its rights of administration to Japan does not constitute a transfer of underlying sovereignty (which the United States does not have), nor can it affect the underlying claims of any of the disputants. The Committee reaffirms that the provisions of the Agreement do not affect any claims of sovereignty with respect to the Senkaku or Taio Yu Tai Islands by any state.” Note: This Report should have used the spelling “Tiao Yu Tai Islands” or “Diao Yu Tai Islands,” instead of “Taio Yu Tai Islands.”