3 Small Islands and May Fourth

Kyan Foo is a first year History student. He is interested in Chinese history, particularly into the Late Qing, Republican, and Communist periods.  (fookyan6@gmail.com)

Introduction

An unmanned island, merely seven square kilometres in area–half the size of the borough of Kensington and Chelsea–and 300 kilometres from the nearest  continental coast. The seas crash against its coasts, not just tides of literal waves, but the tide of a conflict of nationalism. Such a tiny piece of land manages to draw into conflict nations that are millions in times its size, with profound implications once the dust settles on this chapter of their fraught relations.

In recent Sino-Japanese discourse, the underlying issue of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands was often buried under the weight of more pertinent issues, such as the acknowledgement of wartime crimes and international alliances. Only 7 sq km in total area, the islands lie in the space between Taiwan and Okinawa, overlooking key shipping lanes and potential gas reserves [1]. For decades after the war ended in 1945, the islands were, only nominally, under Japan’s control, until the Japanese government reached a deal to buy them from their private owner in 2012 [1]. 

This triggered a spread of protests in almost a hundred Chinese cities, driven largely by  a sizable student population, like a “raging fire” in September 2012 [3]. The clear anti-Japanese stance led to the vandalism and boycotting of Japanese goods by the protestors, calling for the returning of the islands and for the Chinese government to take action. Was this a resurgence of a new form of Chinese nationalism, with a demographic that was beginning its involvement in political activism?

Arguably not. In fact, the outpouring of patriotic sentiment, especially from the youth, harked back to memories of the May Fourth movement in 1919. While now over a century ago, the fundamental tenets of national pride and resistance against external threats still drive both public conviction and the Chinese government’s attitude in its quest towards achieving territorial sovereignty in the current day. 

May Fourth Movement and the origins of Chinese Nationalism 

The May Fourth movement, generally identified as the “Chinese Enlightenment” [6], originated simply as a protest against the result of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, where Japan was able to retain control of the former German colony in Shandong province. The Chinese delegation sent to Paris failed to achieve their aims in reclaiming their lost possessions, nor were they able to gain recognition as a major power, resulting in little to no influence over the postwar order [4]. The public were furious, with protesters in Beijing boycotting Japanese goods and even ransacking a pro-Japanese minister’s house, burning it down. 

Although it did scale down towards more peaceful marches, the passion for change remained, introducing new sectors of the population to the forefront of political consciousness, such as women and students. The Beijing universities came together to draft demands for the government, including a return of the colony and rejecting the terms of the Versailles Treaty, as well as novel ideas such as a student’s union and for widespread political involvement. It was a mass movement that China never had before, propelled by an intellectual class that looked to the West to integrate new ideas of progress. Eventually, the movement morphed into a larger criticism of old Chinese tradition, summed up by Ying-Shih Yu as “conscious protest against many of the ideas and institutions in the traditional culture, and of conscious emancipation of the individual man and woman from the bondage of forces of tradition” [6]. Prominent scholars such as Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu were pioneers of this mindset. Lu helped to create a new vernacular language, while Chen was instrumental in founding the Chinese Communist Party(CCP), both bringing China into a new age. 

The May Fourth movement was a central facet of the Chinese concept of ‘national humiliation’. The “hundred years of humiliation” was a dark chapter in Chinese history where it was subject to the mercy of foreign powers, stretching from the First Opium War in 1839 until the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 [3]. This was a driving factor in the creation of ‘official nationalism’ the CCP espoused once China began to assume its role in the world post-1980 [3].  This manifested in various forms, not limited to textbooks, novels, museums, songs and even parks that were devoted to reminding the people of the subjugation the West put China under [2]. Chinese nationalism is not solely the glorification of Chinese civilisation, but rather a remembrance of Chinese weakness, and an attitude of wanting to catch up with the West, to ‘cleanse National Humiliation’ [2]. 

‘National Humiliation’ is also described as “a determinist notion of primordial national history that naturally defines eternal enemies” by William Callahan, integral to understanding China’s perspective of other nations [2]. Indeed, the Chinese youth are sensitive to foreign threats to Chinese sovereignty in light of the past, which “strengthens their Chinese identities in contrast to clear enemies—Japan and the United States” [3]. This is especially relevant in the current power dynamic of East Asia. 

Back to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Issue

China’s claim to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is on the basis that they are an inherent part of the Taiwan Island, to which “Chinese sovereignty has been perceived as solid and legally sound” [5]. Regardless of stance on the Taiwan issue, China also claims that in the aftermath of Japan’s unconditional surrender in the Second World War, “all Chinese-ceded territory had to be returned to China”, as ratified in the post-war treaties which affirmed China’s right to reclaim territories lost to Japan before and during the war [3]. 

Meanwhile, the Japanese case for it lies mostly in its control that it has maintained over the larger proportion of its lifetime in the spotlight. At the end of the First Sino-Japanese war in 1895, Japan placed a marker on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and integrated it into its territory [1]. While it was returned to China together with Taiwan after the end of the Second World War, Japan claimed it reasserted control over the islands in the Okinawa reversion deal in 1971 [1]. 

According to Katherine Tseng, the wave of nationalism is obvious in Beijing’s approach to devising new solutions out of this “stalemate”, utilising the narrative of oppression as a political and moral high ground [5]. The growth of Chinese strength has allowed it to strive to take back what it perceived was originally belonging to it, challenging the post-Second World War order in East Asia. As of today, there has not been any military conflict between the two sides over the islands, but there have been multiple incidents of encroachment from both sides into the disputed zones. Diplomatic solutions are difficult to come to, with both sides driven by nationalist sentiment to “appear tough” [1].

Conclusion

The issue of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is representative of the tough present-day stance of the Chinese government towards its claims in the region [1]. In the words of Tseng, “the stalemate lingers on, freezing off once-heated bilateral exchanges in various dimensions. This three-year period has brought back some structural issues to the front burner, which has long been kept dormant” [5]. This statement is reflective of the tense state of affairs that have defined Sino-Japanese relations for the past two centuries, with the world hoping that no conflict arises out of it. Despite this, the lingering memory of the May Fourth movement lives on, empowering the Chinese in their quest for ‘cleansing National Humiliation’.

Works Cited

[1] BBC News (2014) How uninhabited islands soured China-Japan ties. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139.

[2] Callahan, W. (2004) 'National Insecurities: Humiliation, Salvation, and Chinese Nationalism,' Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 29(2), pp. 199–218.

[3] Chen, R. (2017) ‘Chinese Youth Nationalism in a Pressure Cooker’, Dittmer, L. (ed(s).) Taiwan and China. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 93-113. 

[4]Kaufman, A. (2014) 'In Pursuit of Equality and Respect: China's Diplomacy and the League of Nations,' Modern China, 40(6), pp. 605-638.

[5] Tseng, K. (2014) 'China’s Territorial Disputes with Japan,' The Journal of Territorial and Maritime Studies’, 1(2), pp. 71–95.

[6] Yu, Y. (2016) ‘Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment: A Historian’s Reflections on the May Fourth Movement’, Chiu-Duke, J. and Duke, M. (ed(s).) Chinese History and Culture. New York City: Columbia University Press, pp. 198-218.