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If you keep up with foreign politics like a good Berkeley student does, you may have heard about the China’s renewed animosity towards Japan sparked by a territorial dispute over a group of small rocky islands near Taiwan that the Chinese call Diaoyu and the Japanese call Senkaku. The contention over these uninhabitable little islands started during WWII, was shelved during the Cold War period, and then exploded in September 2012 when the Japanese government purchased the island from their private owners. Now the Chinese and Japanese are stationing fighter jets and military ships as tensions mount and the rest of the world takes sides, including America.
I don’t keep up with foreign politics with as much passion as the reputed Berkeley student, but I was lucky to be updated by my mom when I went home for spring break. As is the case with most of the previous generation of Chinese, my mom is quick to remind me that Japan never apologized for or even acknowledged its WWII war crimes against the Chinese, and this island dispute is just another reason to distrust Japan. This much was clear as she explained the situation to me.
According to the white paper released by the PRC, Diaoyu indisputably belongs to the Chinese and only through post-WWII confusion were the islands wrongfully attributed to Japan. The Chinese owned the islands until the Japanese “illegally” stole them in the 1985 Sino-Japanese war and renamed them the Senkaku islands. China was weak then, and Japan was proving itself to be the Germany of the East as it took Chinese territories (e.g. Korea) and invaded its land (e.g. Nanking). In the 1943 Cairo Conference of the major Allied powers, it was agreed that the territories Japan took from China would be returned to China if the Allies won the world war. The consequent 1951 San Francisco Peace treaty required Japan to relinquish many of its island claims. However, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands were not returned to China; instead, they were given as part of the Okinawa islands to the US to occupy and keep an eye on Japan. The 1972 Okinawa Revision Treaty returned Okinawa and consequently assigned the disputed island to Japan. Since then, China and Taiwan have both repeatedly contested Japanese ownership of the islands.
But why are China and Japan up in arms about it only now? And why is this fuss over some little islands? Several reasons are given. Oil (surprise, surprise) is one; the area around these islands are potentially major oil deposits. Plentiful fishing resources are another. The islands have a strategic location, too. Most important, probably, is nationalist pride.
China has struggled to rebuild itself since its devastation during the Sino-Japanese wars and its self-destruction during the Cultural Revolution. Now that it has the recognition, economic security, and military might to back its claims, China can assert itself as an international power and take back what it lost to Japan (and, indirectly, to America). China has a long and bitter relationship with Japan, and atrocities that Japanese soldiers committed against the Chinese during the last Sino-Japanese war are still a recent memory, albeit faded. Anti-Japanese sentiment carries on through the generations, however, and the island dispute only rekindled the animosity. The hate goes both ways.
Chinese nationalism rears a fearsome head. The anti-Japanese protests sparked by the island controversy involved a lot of Japan-made car smashing, and in a more extreme case a car owner was smashed, too. Panasonic factories in China were set aflame, Hong Kong airlines cancelled routes to Tokyo, and an estimated two-thirds of China participated in a boycott of Japanese goods.
My mom decided to join the boycott as well last September. I quickly pointed out that all of our family cars are either Toyota or Honda manufactured, and she admitted she would not be selling her car, but would avoid buying any more Japanese products. This was around the time of the opening of Uniqlo in San Francisco, and, though both of us had been looking forward to it, we shopped at the Swedish owned H&M instead. I am currently typing on a new Lenovo laptop, of which my mom approves because it was made in China.
As for myself, I still enjoy Hi-Chews and Kasugai gummies which I find in the candy section of Daiso. Clearly, China’s political troubles are not as personal of a matter for me as they are for my mom. She tells me that she didn’t used to care about politics when she was my age – like most people my age. Now, however, she roots for China as she scans headlines and she takes the US support of Japan personally. I’m divided as I read the US reports on the dispute (the US is not very unbiased when it comes to China) and the Chinese reports (and China is…well, China). At the very least, my mom’s pro-China/anti-Japan passion has overcome my political indifference and sparked my interest in foreign politics. And if some Sino-Japanese war really does break out and America gets involved, as it often does, I’ll be an adequately informed Berkeley student, even if still impartially Chinese American.
The BBC overview of the controversy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139
The very detailed PRC issued white paper: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-09/25/c_131872152.htm
More about the Chinese boycott and its economic effect: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/china-japan-dispute-takes-rising-toll-of-asia-s-top-economies.html
America’s stance on the conflict: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/22/japa-j22.html
And further explanation of America’s involvement: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-05/opinions/36757731_1_senkakus-diaoyu-islands-china-and-japan
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