Senkaku a/k/a Diaoyutai

They are a small group of islands in the East China Sea that have been Japanese-controlled for about a century. The Chinese have maintained that the Diaoyutai Islands (Senkaku in Japanese) were supposed to be transferred to China following World War II, but China’s post-war revolutionary battles prevented the implementation of that process. Now, in a year of political upheaval, economic slowdown, scandal at the top of the Communist Party and the time when the Party will meet to lay down its near-term policies and sanction the transition of power to the next generation of leaders at the top – notably the installation of Xi Jinping to replace the departing Hu Jintao – the people, the country and the party needed a distraction, a rallying point top leaders reasoned. As the Japanese government formalized its territorial claims by effecting land purchases on these islands, the PRC demanded that the islands be recognized as bona fide Chinese territory.

The little symbolic gestures followed. China withdrew its badminton team from a major tournament in Japan. A Japanese tennis player competing in the early October China Open required extra security. In the second week of October, a Chinese delegation announced they would not attend a series of international financial meetings in Tokyo because of the dispute. The not-so-little symbolic gestures made headlines. Big civil protests, carefully organized but with destruction, rocks and bottles thrown into the mix, took to the streets. In China, the 7-Eleven chain is Japanese-owned, so they prudently closed. But in mid-September, what were supposed to be peaceful protests turned ugly. For example, a mob in the ancient Chinese capital of Xi’an attacked a fellow citizen, Li Jianli, crushing his skull and leaving him paralyzed, just because he was driving a Japanese car! There’s even a theory floating around China that Japan’s move oto solidify its hold on these disputed islands is part of an American conspiracy to humiliate the PRC. The U.S. ambassador’s car was attacked in a protest outside our embassy in Beijing.

It’s not hard in China to stir up anti-Japanese sentiments. Japan’s pre-WWII invasion of China and the ensuing brutality are indelibly etched into the psyches of every Chinese citizen. There is no love lost between these two powers, and the defense treaties that the United States has with Japan continue to ruffle PRC feathers. September 18^th is a particularly sensitive date in Chinese history, because it marks the beginning of the Japanese invasion of the mainland… over an excuse known as the Mukden Incident (often referred to in Chinese history books as the “day of humiliation”): “On September 18, 1931, an explosion destroyed a section of railway track near the [northern] city of Mukden. The Japanese, who owned the railway, blamed Chinese nationalists for the incident and used the opportunity to retaliate and invade Manchuria.” U.S. Department of State.

So this past September 18^th – with the territorial island dispute on everyone’s mind – brought home the festering feelings of ill-will against Japan: “In Beijing, several thousand people brought one of the city’s diplomatic districts to a standstill as they swelled out from a crucial artery, the Third Ring Road, to beyond the Japanese Embassy. The police kept protesters separated into groups of 100 to 200 each; at the peak of the demonstration, in the early afternoon, streets were lined with at least 20 such groups.

“As the day progressed, crowds threw rocks and water bottles at the well-guarded embassy compound. Some of the banners were crude, with sexual undertones that might have reflected the Japanese military’s brutal wartime treatment of Chinese, including the systematic rape of Chinese women during its 14-year invasion and occupation of parts of the country. One banner showed a Chinese soldier castrating a Japanese soldier, while a popular image depicted Japan’s national flag as a white sanitary napkin with a spot of blood in the middle… Although the protests clearly had government support — large-scale public demonstrations are extremely rare in China — many people came on their own and appeared to be genuinely angered at what they saw as Japan’s failure to address its past behavior.” New York Times, September 18^th. The PRC demanded that the United States keep out of the regional dispute, leaving it to the Asian powers to resolve between themselves.

But now, despite an attempt to draw popular support to this territorial dispute, all eyes are turned to the next Party Congress, which is slated to begin on November 8^th, immediately after the U.S. elections. Who’s in and who’s out, how deep the Bo Xilai/Ling Jihua scandals will inflict damage among the Party’s apparatchik and exactly how the Party intends to redirect the next level of economic growth are all burning questions that have refocused popular – and global – attention.

There is a lot of cleaning house that needs to take place, lots of reconnection with the people many of whom have turned cynical over the roiling and never-ending cycles of corruption and cronyism that plague the country and a need for clear new polices that will reassure the populace after their central leaders seem to have let the entire country down. For those of us who are China-watchers, this time in China is probably the most critical period in that nation’s history since Deng Xiaoping created the face of the modern economic China beginning over three decades ago.

The new administration will begin a ten-year political administration in tough economic times. How the United States will relate in the region and how the global economy will fare in the coming years very much depends on this new government, one that seems to have already written off the United States as a power in steep and precipitous decline. The distraction of island territorial disputes may return, but right now, there is a whole lot more going on in the PRC.

I’m Peter Dekom, and next to our own Presidential election, this transition in China may be the most important process that will impact our daily lives for years to come.