Free China's Territorial Disputes by Chien-Peng Chung Page B

of the company and the investment shares of the participating parties; however, due to subsequent fierce public denunciation by the People’s Republic of China, this was put off indefinitely. 14
    On 23 December 1970, the Taipei Central Daily News reported that
    The three countries of China (Taiwan), Japan, and (South) Korea have already agreed to jointly develop the continental shelf, (to which end) each country will establish a committee to research, explore and plan; the boundaries of continental shelf discussed by the three countries include the vast area from the East China Sea to the Japan Sea, including Tiaoyutai. 15
    The plan apparently called for dividing the spoils of oil development through arrangements assuring the harmonization of the private corporations involved. Thus Japan’s Teikoku and Gulf Oil of the United States would then have had a Japanese concession overlapping the previous existing Gulf Oil concession from Taiwan, which would then have been renegotiated to restructure Gulf’s obligations to Taipei. 16
    If Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul had counted on having a free hand in the development of the continental shelf without Beijing’s cooperation or interference, they were sorely mistaken. On 20 December an editorial entitled “Resolutely Do Not Tolerate Attempts by American and Japanese Revisionists To Rob Our Country’s Submarine Resources” suddenly made its appearance in Beijing’s authoritative People’s Daily. The editorial stressed that
    American and Japanese revisionists are now playing up this so-called “development cooperation” through the Japan-Chiang(Kai-shek)-Park (Chung Hee) “United Oceanic Development Company” to grab our country’s submarine resources. ... Taiwan Province and the islets appertaining to it, which includes the Diaoyu (islands), constitute China’s sacred territory. The oceans surrounding these islands and the Chinese coast and the submarine resources containing therein all belongs to China, which would resolutely not allow others to lay their dirty fingers on them. Only the People’s Republic of China has the right to explore and develop the submarine resources of this region.
    It also pointed out that the director of Japan’s Self Defense Agency, Yasuhiro Nakasone, was sufficiently militaristic to include these islands within the defense perimeter of Japan’s “Fourth Military Expansion Plan.” 17 Incidentally, as prime minister of Japan, the same Nakasone proposed in 1983 a 1,000-mile radius sphere of interest around the Japanese Isles, which would include the area of the disputed claim, and even Taiwan, and once again drew accusations from its Asiatic neighbors and China of an attempt to revive Japan’s militarism and imperialism.
    So far, whatever negotiations that had been going on were confined to the semi-official “Level I” negotiators, but “Level II” social forces within Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and especially the Chinese communities in North America, were already starting to organize, opposed to what they perceived as unseemly willingness on the part of their own governments to compromise, perhaps even sacrifice, their country’s sovereignty for the benefits of economic development. Beginning 6 September 1970, reports surfaced in Hong Kong about Japanese Maritime Safety Agency patrol crafts obstructing Taiwanese fishing boats from coming too close to the vicinity of the disputed Tiaoyutai Islands. 18 Already earlier on 2 September 1970, a journalist from Taiwan had hoisted the national flag of the Republic of China on the largest island, but the flag was subsequently removed by the Okinawa police. This incident seemed to have served as the catalyst for a series of demonstrations and protest marches, with participants numbering in the hundreds against “resurgent Japanese militarism” and the need to defend Chinese sovereignty on Tiaoyutai. The first protest marches and demonstrations were held in January 1971 and organized by Taiwanese