For more than a month, the Chinese Communist Party’s media and commentators have been trying to propagandize the “undecided status of Okinawa islands.” Such propaganda has reached its peak since Okinawa Prefecture Governor Denny Tamaki’s high-profile visit to China early this month. Beijing is indirectly warning Tokyo.
China is once again playing the “Ryukyu card” for various reasons, among which its fear of Japan and the US deploying land-based medium-range guided missiles in the Okinawa islands is perhaps its biggest worry.
The intention of the Chinese propaganda became even more evident after Tamaki arrived in China on July 3. The governor is a known pro-China advocate. His one-week trip was meticulously stage-managed by Beijing. Three things are worth noting.
First, on July 3, Tamaki said in an interview with the Global Times that Okinawa should not be reduced to a battlefield due to “a Taiwan emergency is a Japan emergency,” approach. Second, on July 4, he paid his respects at the Ryukyu Kingdom cemetery in Beijing. Last, he traveled on July 6 to China’s Fujian Province, where he visited another Ryukyu Kingdom cemetery in Fuzhou, which is home to Ryukyu crew members and students who died in Fuzhou during the Ming and Qing dynasties. He also visited the Ryukyu Pavilion, a center of ancient Ryukyu officials who were sent to China to pay tributes.
These arrangements, including the stance taken and the strengthening of historical links between China and the Ryukyu Kingdom, are obvious to the Taiwanese, because China has adopted similar tactics against Taiwan.
China is playing the “Ryukyu card” for many reasons, but one point has not yet been discussed. By going back in time to last year, a clue appears. July 8 last year, China first revealed the news through the Global Times that the Japanese military would assist the US to deploy medium-range guided missile troops to the Okinawa islands. On July 28, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense responded that if the deployment is implemented, China would firmly counteract it, warning that Japan and the US should not have any illusions about this.
Following then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August last year, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched large-scale military exercises in the waters surrounding Taiwan. On Aug. 4, the first day of the drills, five missiles landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, immediately resulting in strong condemnation and protest from Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration. Beijing’s move also proved former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s claim that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency,” while virtually legitimizing the deployment of missiles in Okinawa Prefecture to deter a Chinese invasion into Japanese territory.
Regardless of whether China’s surprise missile landing was intentional, Beijing must have known the impact of the incident. By linking this to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political show at the new China National Archives of Publications and Culture last month, and the visit of a pro-China delegation led by former Japanese House speaker Yohei Kono, along with Tamaki, it is reasonable to assume that this is a result of China’s fear of US missile deployment in Japan, and part of Beijing’s countermeasure to shake up and break through the situation.
After all, from China’s existing military containment in the first island chain, if Japan and the US were to add a medium-range guided missile base to choke off access to the Miyako Strait, how much would that deter China?
Tzou Jiing-wen is editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times).
Translated by Eddy Chang
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