By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Where can the national flags of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (or Taiwan), officially regarded by Beijing as a "renegade province", fly side by side? On barren, uninhabited islands also claimed by Japan, of course.
At least for the time being, it seems only the Japanese can succeed in uniting mainland Chinese with their fractious kin in Taiwan, while also bringing on board Hong Kong, another
problematic relation, and Macau, an apolitical gambling mecca.
Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, and Macau was handed back to the China by Portugal in 1999.
The ongoing dispute over these potentially resource-rich islands - known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan - is a perennial issue that China's leaders use as suits their purposes, to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment and boost nationalism among Chinese everywhere.
Two Sino-Japanese wars (1895-1896 and 1937-1945), the Rape of Nanking (1937), Japan's de facto colonization of Taiwan (1895-1945) and its brutal occupation of Hong Kong (1941-1945) - all these dark memories were just beneath the surface when Chinese activists last week hired fishing boats for a quixotic, flag-bearing mission to these rocky outcrops in the East China Sea.
Japan's ultimately failed ambition to rule over all of Asia - which ended with two nuclear clouds over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 - somehow becomes emotionally tied to a political sea stunt with no practical significance.
The islands are at present a privately owned part of Okinawa Prefecture, but Beijing and Taipei also claim them and strenuously objected to a recent statement by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda that his government was considering purchasing them.
Waters rich in oil and natural gas reserves surround the islands, and these reserves are a real and serious bone of contention between Tokyo, Beijing and Taipei.
For the activists who have invaded the islands - and for the publicity surrounding their antics - the focus is not oil or gas. Their goal is to be seen on televisions, computers and smart phones around the world hoisting flags and shouting nationalistic slogans as they are corralled by coast guard officers. And, last week, for the first time since 1996, a Hong Kong-based group achieved that goal, clambering onto the largest of the islands before being seized by the coast guard.
In July, a Taiwanese fishing boat, escorted by five vessels from Taiwan's coast guard, raised a flag near the islands; confusingly, however, it was a People's Republic of China flag, not Taiwan's.
In September 2010, after a Chinese fishing boat appeared deliberately to ram into a Japan Coast Guard patrol near the islands, the captain and crew of the vessel were arrested and detained, prompting a vigorous protest from Beijing. Crew members were released a week later while the captain was held for 18 days; no charges were filed.
At the time, Chinese authorities regarded the detentions as an escalation of the dispute over the islands; previous offenders had been deported after only a brief lockup, again without being charged.
This time around, the Japanese resorted to the old formula and deported the 14 people involved in Wednesday's incident - eight activists, two journalists and the boat's crew - but not before the activists, who are sponsored by the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands, could raise their flags and shout slogans such as "Japan out of the Diaoyu Islands! Down with Japanese militarism!"
Seven of the still-defiant activists flew back to Hong Kong on Friday; the others are headed back to the city, under escort by a Chinese vessel, in the trawler, Kai Fung 2, that carried them to the islands.
Not to be outdone, 150 Japanese nationalists, including eight parliamentarians, organized a 20-boat flotilla to the islands on Sunday where they, too, were met by the coast guard and denied permission to disembark; nevertheless, 10 of them jumped into the sea and swam ashore, promptly raising Japanese flags.
China's Foreign Ministry issued a "serious protest" last week over Japan's interception of Kai Fung 2, calling it a "gross violation of China's territorial integrity," and issued another rebuke to Tokyo on Sunday for allowing the Japanese expedition to the islands.
The Japanese flotilla sparked angry protests in across China, with one in Shenzhen drawing 20,000 people and turning nasty as demonstrators overturned Japanese-brand cars and pitched rocks and bottles through windows of Japanese restaurants.
The names and backgrounds of the motley band aboard Kai Fung 2 add a rich layer of irony to this story. Indeed, when they are not scrambling over rocks in the East China Sea, the Hong Kong activists spend much of their time demonstrating against Chinese rule in their city.
Former legislator Tsang Kin-shing, for example, a member of the radical League of Social Democrats (LSD) who is better known as "The Bull" among Hong Kong's population of 7.1 million, takes part in just about every big anti-government rally staged in the city, including the annual June 4 candlelight vigil to honor those killed in the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Needless to say, you will not hear Tsang trumpeting pro-China slogans at the candlelight vigil, or at any of the other protests in which he plays a role. But the dispute over the islands instantly transforms him into a die-hard patriot.
Two other activists on board the trawler - construction workers Koo Sze-yiu and Lo Chau - are also closely associated with the LSD, whose members have made a practice of throwing fruit and other objects at Hong Kong's chief executive and his ministers when they appear in the chamber of the Legislative Council, Hong Kong's mini-parliament.
Ng Shek-yiu from Macau and Fang Xiaosong from mainland China joined the group on Kai Fung 2, giving it an appearance of unity and wide representation that helped to inspire the anti-Japan protests in Hong Kong and across the mainland.
So far, from Beijing's point of view, most of these manifestations of national pride have been a good thing: widespread and loud enough to make an impression on Tokyo but - the Shenzhen bedlam aside - not bloody and chaotic, threatening instability.
The violence in Shenzhen goes to show that Chinese leaders are playing what can be a dangerous game. So, too, however, are the Japanese.
The protests may have been triggered by the antics of activists on both sides, but it certainly did nothing to boost Sino-Japanese relations last week when two of Noda's cabinet members - Jin Matsubara, who heads a bureau seeking the return of Japanese who have been kidnapped by North Korea, and land minister Yuichiro Hata - paid separate visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where 2.5 million war dead are honored, including 14 convicted war criminals from World War II. Such visits revive bitter memories and light up tempers all over Asia, especially in China.
Overall, the Chinese leadership must view this latest anti-Japanese sea voyage as an unqualified success, and it seems clear Beijing did nothing to discourage it.
It is no accident that the East China Sea has not witnessed a Hong Kong-launched protest since 1996 as the Hong Kong, and central governments have made a point of blocking any such plan. By contrast, this year's activists faced minimal, if not token, resistance until they ran into the Japan Coast Guard as they approached the islands.
Four Hong Kong marine-police boarded the trawler as it began its journey last Sunday and, according to police chief Andy Tsang Wai-hung, tried to stop it. Finding the vessel's wheelhouse locked and lacking the equipment to break into it, however, Tsang said the officers gave up and left the boat 180 meters from international waters.
Also this year, in an unprecedented move, Hong Kong's recently elected chief executive, Leung Chun-yin, summoned Japanese Consul-General Yuji Kumamaru to demand the release of the activists and to plead the case for Chinese ownership of the islands.
The summons is likely to boost Leung's flagging popularity while at the same time allowing Beijing to score points against Tokyo without becoming directly involved.
That's the way the Chinese leadership likes it.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing56@gmail.com Follow him on Twitter: @KentEwing1
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