The dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) is not a new one. As a young man, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made his name as part of the original Protect the Diaoyutai Movement (PDM), a foot-soldier in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) resistance against China’s efforts to secure unification with Taiwan.
The PDM now has a new manifestation, but this time China is using it as part of its efforts to promote unification. The KMT has previously sought to cover up the truth behind the Diaoyutais and this has caused misunderstandings over what the PDM is really about.
According to US diplomatic records, the original PDM was instigated by Chinese student activists in the US, who were sympathetic to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after Japan declared sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands.
The goal of the movement was to unify China and break up relations between Taiwan, the US and Japan.
That Beijing claims sovereignty over the Diaoyutais galvanized the movement among pro-unification Chinese student activists in the US and Hong Kong. This forced the KMT to make its own claim of sovereignty if it was to survive.
At the time, the US ambassador in Taipei believed that, although Taiwan’s own PDM was not actively encouraged by the government, it was given tacit approval.
It was seen as useful to the anti-unification cause and also a convenient way of showing dissatisfaction at then-US president Richard Nixon’s detente with China.
The Republic of China’s (ROC) ambassador to the US at the time, Chow Shu-kai (周書楷), told the US that the PDM was part of China’s attempts to drive a wedge between Taiwan and the US and that if the KMT did not insist on sovereignty over the islands, there was a risk that Taiwanese intellectuals would “go over” to the PRC.
Chow submitted a memorandum regarding sovereignty of the Diaoyutais to the US, but later, in late 1971 in his new capacity as ROC foreign minister, he conceded to then-US National Security adviser Henry Kissinger that the KMT government had no intention of actually taking the islands.
He also said he hoped the Japanese government would refrain from making such information public because of the political problems this would cause at home.
The weakening of the PDM dissipated following Nixon’s visit to China, and Japan’s subsequent recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China both dealt grievous blows to the KMT.
China is behind the new PDM, too, trying to use it, as it did back in the 1970s, to further unification with Taiwan and break up the First Island Chain that the US wants as a buffer against China’s power.
Now that Ma has accepted the “one China” principle, sovereignty of the Diaoyutais has become a dispute between “China” and Japan.
People who do not know the facts of the matter get hot under the collar as soon as there is talk of violations of sovereignty or territorial disputes. They throw their support behind the Diaoyutais without understanding the subtleties of the issue.
However, since Ma’s concept of the ROC includes sovereignty over all of China, why do his supporters, and particularly Taiwanese businesspeople in China, not claim sovereignty over all of Taiwan and China?
Ma is being played by the PDM. He is nothing but a pawn. This was true in the past and it is true now. If you do not know the truth behind the Diaoyutais, there is no way you can make sense of it.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs