I received the link to Yves
Tiberghien’s highly useful paper on this timely topic. I sent back several
comments to him and a group of his acquaintances. Let me share them with you,
edited for presentation to third persons.
First, the domestic media make little or no attempt
to help their respective publics understand the arguments and supportive
material on the other side and allow the dominant narratives to go mostly
unchallenged. That this is also true of the Japanese media is unsurprising in
light of their treatment of several other issues regarding Japan’s relations
with its east Asia neighbors, but it still puzzles me and finds me in rare
agreement with Gregory Clark. Needless to say, this is highly unhelpful.
Second, the difference in the legal systems
of the two countries regarding real estate ownership and more generally the
state and the individual must have contributed significantly to Chinese misunderstanding
of the Noda administration’s intent. Simply put, the Chinese public must find
the notion that the state would have to engage in a regular bidding match with
a local governor for a piece of land that is registered in a private individual’s
name absurd. I suspect that most of China’s political and national security leadership,
with little to no direct personal exposure to the legal and political systems
of the West, also find it intuitively difficult to understand. He touches on
this point briefly when you say, “Especially in a Chinese context,
it seems unthinkable that there would not be a third option where the national
government could step in to prevent the Tokyo deal without doing a full
nationalization.” This must have been true at the grassroots and leadership
levels alike and contributed significantly to the visceral fury and ferocity
and made the conflict more intractable.
Third, there appears to have been an overreliance
on formal diplomatic channels on the part of the Noda administration in explaining
itself regarding the purchase. Foreign ministries are professionally inclined
to downplay conflict, and—correct me if I’m wrong—the Chinese foreign minister
is more of an administrative vice minister, but the DPJ’s options were limited
given its paucity of political ties with China, particularly after Ichiro Ozawa
pulled up stakes and moved out. I suspect that this was one reason why the Noda
administration underestimated the Chinese blowback.
Fourth, I believe that making the legal and
practical distinction between territorial waters and EEZs is useful to
understanding the nature of the conflict. He writes:
“Coast guard tactics started with
loudspeakers but, beginning in 2009-2010, gradually have expanded to more
hard-ball methods to try to corner individual fishing boats, seize their fish
and machinery and thus extract fines from the (mostly poor) fishermen. It is in
that context that the clash occurred with Captain Zhang Qixong in September
2010”; and
“In the midst of growing tension
in the Koizumi years, a further secret agreement seems to have been reached to
reduce conflicts. That agreement stipulated that
Japan would not bring under Japanese legal jurisdiction any arrested Chinese
fishing boat captains, but would only expel them back to China (after,
probably, extracting a material cost on them).”
He implies that the Koizumi
administration was arresting Chinese fishermen and “probably, extracting a
material cost on them” before 2009-2010. Since it is impossible to arrest
fishermen unless you first apprehend their vessels, am I correct in assuming
that this also involved some efforts to “corner individual fishing boats”? Is
it possible that whatever apparent escalation on the part of the Japanese Coast
Guard there was had been caused by the need to match up with bigger and faster Chinese
fishing vessels, ever more numerous and aggressive, in executing the same enforcement
activities? And what kind of escalation was involved in moving from “extracting
a material cost on them” to “seiz[ing] their fish and machinery”? If by “machinery”
he means tackling gear and other movables (and not engines and other bolted-down
heavy machinery), it sounds very much like the “material cost” of the Koizumi
years. To understand what was going on here, it may be useful to make a distinction
between the territorial waters of the islands and the surrounding EEZ. If I remember
correctly, both were left out of the treaties that determined jurisdictions over
the fishing rights in the East China Sea. This effectively meant that Japan maintained
effective control over the territorial waters there but had no authority over
Chinese fishing vessels in the EEZ. There things might have stood for eternity
and a day, but the Chinese vessels got bigger and better and more numerous as Chinese
appetite for piscine protein grew, and fishing stock in the EEZ must have deteriorated,
making the territorial waters more inviting. There’s an argument to be made
that these intrusions into the territorial waters increased significantly quantitatively
and qualitatively, leading to the 2010 collision that led to the Japanese
threat to prosecute the Chinese fishing boat captain.
Finally, he mercifully spares us the prescriptive
my-aunt-as-a-teacart coda so common in these tracts. Believe me, if there were
a useful solution with a plausible game plan, we would know by now. Perhaps if
someone put the two perspectives together in an overarching narrative presentable
to both sides, people might come up with one.
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