MCLC: China accuses Japan of stealing islands

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China accuses Japan of stealing islands
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (9/11/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/world/asia/china-accuses-japan-of-stealin
g-disputed-islands.html

China Accuses Japan of Stealing After Purchase of Group of Disputed Islands
By JANE PERLEZ 

TIANJIN, China — The Chinese government accused Japan on Tuesday of
stealing a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea, hours after
the Japanese government announced that it had bought them from their
private Japanese owners for nearly $30 million.

In a show of strength, China sent two maritime law enforcement ships to
the islands, which are known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in
Japan.

The ships, belonging to the China Marine Surveillance, are commonly
deployed in theSouth China Sea, where China and its neighbors have other
territorial disputes over islands.

Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, said Tuesday that the marine agency
had drafted an “action plan” for asserting China’s claim to the disputed
islands.

The Japanese government’s purchase of the islands from a Japanese family
was intended to prevent the conservative governor of Tokyo from buying
them, a step that would have heightened the clash with China, Japanese
officials said. The Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara, had said he would
develop the islands, something the national government does not plan to do.

But in an unusual array of strong statements by top leaders in recent
days, China has asserted that the islands have belonged to China since
ancient times.

Over the weekend, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, warned the Japanese
prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit meeting in Russia that nationalizing the islands would be illegal,
Xinhua reported.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said
the purchase of the islands by the Japanese government “cannot alter the
fact the Japanese side stole the islands from China.”

The confrontation between China and Japan comes as the Chinese government
nears the start of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition at a Communist
Party Congress expected to be held within weeks.

Some Western analysts say they believe that the strong public defense of
China’s territorial claims may be a way to deflect attention from an
unusually rocky succession process by shaking up the strong Chinese
nationalist feelings against Japan.

The Chinese state news media have not reported that the country’s
presumptive new leader, Vice President Xi Jinping, has canceled meetings
with foreign leaders since last Wednesday. His absence has provoked
widespread speculation about his condition on the Internet. In contrast,
the state media have been full of reports in the last several weeks about
the disputed islands and what are presented as the transgressions of the
Japanese.

China and Japan have a long history of conflict, and the brutal Japanese
occupation of China during World War II left bitter memories among many
Chinese. Japanese nationalists, for their part, view China with suspicion.

Nationalist sentiment against Japan has surged in China in recent weeks
over the disputed islands even as both countries observed the 40th
anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations this month.

Two weeks ago, Chinese protesters ripped the Japanese flag off the car of
Japan’s ambassador to China, Uichiro Niwa, as he traveled through Beijing.

On Tuesday, Japan announced that it was sending a new envoy, Shinichi
Nishimiya, to replace Mr. Niwa, who was considered too sympathetic to
China by some Japanese members of Parliament.

The intensity of the feelings in China against the Japanese purchase of
the islands was expressed in academic circles.

Hu Lingyuan, deputy director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Fudan
University in Shanghai, said the Japanese notion of reducing tensions by
buying the islands before the Tokyo government could do so would not
mollify Beijing.

“Justifying the so-called nationalization as a means to keep the Diaoyu
Islands situation stable is self-deception,” he said of the purchase. “The
Chinese people won’t fall for the Noda government’s lie.”

In contrast, a prominent Chinese journalist, Wang Shuo, the managing
editor of Caixin Media, said Tuesday on his microblog, “China is
protesting because it cannot accept any transfer of property rights that
is not under Chinese sovereignty and actual rule.” He added: “The Japanese
government bought the island to prevent its being bought by a right-wing
Japanese politician. It could help contain the situation.”

The situation would be worse if the Tokyo governor had bought the islands.
By intervening with its own purchase, the Japanese government can block
efforts by Japanese nationalists, who have sailed to the islands in the
past few weeks to try to occupy them, to land there.

A storekeeper in Beijing who gave only his surname, Li, said: “When other
countries insult the United States, America strikes back with force,
defending its honor. But when China is actually attacked, when its people
are dying, all we do is insult the attacker. I’m ashamed to be Chinese.”

Bree Feng and Adam Century contributed research.