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Written by: Huang Shunyang
2021-05-30 21:00
Last update date: 2021-05-30 21:01
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands. The situation in the Taiwan Strait has heated up again. The earlier US-Japan summit mentioned that Diaoyutai (called the "Senkaku Islands" in Japan) falls within the scope of the "Japan-US Security Treaty" and indirectly recognized Japan's sovereignty over Diaoyutai.
However, compared with the successful demonstrations and activities to protect the Diaoyu Islands in 1971, the dispute over Diaoyutai sovereignty has not seen a trace of "patriotic" ripples in Hong Kong.
In the past 50 years, why has Hong Kong's understanding of the country and national identity changed so much?
But does today’s society’s resistance and alienation from the state stem from a deeper and deeper understanding or an increasingly blind prejudice?
How should we re-recognize the country?
Recently, the situation in the Taiwan Strait has heated up again. The U.S. and Japan held a summit on April 16. The leaders of the two sides issued a joint statement after the meeting. Rarely mentioned the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait—the first time since the U.S.-Japan statement in 1969. They will jointly face China’s challenges in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It is also mentioned that Diaoyutai falls within the scope of the "Japan-US Security Treaty" and that the United States is obliged to protect Japanese territory from armed attacks.
Regardless of who owns the sovereignty of Diaoyutai, the official responses on both sides of the strait are quite different.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the US-Japan joint statement for grossly interfering in China's internal affairs, stressing that Taiwan and Diaoyutai are Chinese territories, and has stated its solemn position to the US and Japan through diplomatic channels.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it would work closely with the United States, Japan, and other countries with similar ideas to jointly maintain peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. It did not mention that Diaoyutai, which has a sovereignty dispute, was unilaterally included in the fifth of the US-Japan Security Treaty. The scope of application of the article is suspected of "being insult to power and humiliating the country."
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands, and the situation in the Taiwan Strait is heating up again.
(Getty Images)
In fact, before the U.S.-Japan summit, China, the United States and Japan have frequently conducted military operations around the waters near the Diaoyutai, where sovereignty disputes between China and Japan are disputed.
What is helpless is that neither the US-Japan summit’s declaration of infringement of sovereignty, the series of military actions by China, the US and Japan, or the Taiwanese government’s "subduedness" have not aroused a trace of "patriotic" ripples in Hong Kong. Liao Huaimian's article on the 50th anniversary of the Diaoyu Islands protection movement, and members of the Hong Kong Diaoyu Islands Action Committee, who have organized trips to the Diaoyu Islands to declare sovereignty in spite of their lives, have not launched any activities since 2018.
The private sector rarely discusses related issues.
I can't help but feel regretful. Fifty years after the establishment of the Hong Kong Diaoyu Action Committee in 1971, many Hong Kong people have become more than vague about their country and nationality, and they seem to have become "outsiders" who have nothing to do with me.
To understand the earth-shaking changes in Hong Kong’s national identity over the past 50 years, it is necessary to go back to history, to understand the social background when the Diaoyu Movement was initiated, and to find the context from the evolution of Hong Kong’s national identity over time. Looking for a good way to re-understand the country.
Chen Yunan (left) and Ou Boquan (left) point to the first wave of Diaoyu protection that can be traced back to the 1970s in Taiwan and North American students.
(Photo by Ou Jiale)
"Hong Kong's movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands can be divided into three waves." Chen Yunan, chairman of the Action Committee for the protection of the Diaoyu Islands, and Au Boquan, vice chairman, recalled the development of the movement.
They pointed out that the first wave can be traced back to the wave of protection of the Diaoyu Islands caused by students from Taiwan and North America in 1970; the second wave was a claim movement related to the protection of the Diaoyu Islands in 1990; and the third wave was the Japanese Youth Club in Diaoyutai in 1996. The erection of a lighthouse on the North Island of Lieyu has once again triggered an upsurge in the protection of the Diaoyu Islands, and has worked with Zeng Jiancheng, Chen Yunan, Ke Hua and Luo Kan to organize the operation of the Diaoyu Protection Action Committee.
The fuse of the first wave of anti-diaoyu movement can be traced back to September 1970. At that time, the Okinawa Police Department was ordered by the Japanese government and the U.S. Civil Administration to pull off the flag of the Republic of China on the Diaoyutai and expel Taiwanese fishing boats in nearby waters. .
The incident aroused the patriotism of the overseas Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, and began to organize demonstrations to protect the Diaoyu Islands.
This upsurge of protecting the Diaoyu Islands quickly spread to the Chinese student community in North America, spreading across the east and west coasts of the United States, from the initial Preston University in the northeastern United States to the Western University of California at Berkeley and other Chinese study abroad circles.
Patriotic movement led by students
At that time, the mainland of China was not yet open. North American students were mainly from Taiwan and Hong Kong. They held their first large-scale national demonstration on January 29, 1971. The momentum was huge. Two to three thousand people gathered outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York to protest, shouting " The first voice of "Diaoyutai".
Since then, teachers and students in Hong Kong responded to the demonstrations in North America to protect the Diaoyu Islands. In early February of the same year, the "Hong Kong Diaoyu Action Committee" was formed, and the first demonstration in Hong Kong was held on the morning of February 18. During the "Zero" day demonstration, about 200 college students, middle school students, and young employed people held slogans such as "Down with Japanese militarism", "Death to the death to defend the Diaoyutai", "No U.S. investment in China's oil mines", and "Use the May Fourth patriotism" , Demonstration outside the Japanese Cultural Center on Dejili Street (now Dejili Street) in Central, shouting the slogan "Diaoyutai".
However, Hong Kong’s initial campaign to protect the Diaoyu Islands can almost be regarded as the "nothing to do" of a very small number of students. The British colonial government and the general public did not pay much attention to the incident and lacked in-depth media coverage. The relevant news is even in the pro-KMT "" The Huaqiao Daily and the pro-Communist Ta Kung Pao only have a few sentences.
In the following six months, the Diaoyu movement became more and more vigorous. By the end of 1971, it had evolved from a student movement to a patriotic social movement that accommodated different classes and occupations.
The Diaoyu movement in the 1970s was led by students.
(Getty Images)
The turning point of the incident can be traced back to the "Four, Ten, Zero" demonstrations in the same year.
At that time, the "Hong Kong Provisional Action Committee for the Defense of Diaoyutai" mobilized more than 30 students to demonstrate outside the Japanese Cultural Center. They were intercepted by the police who took the lead at the entrance of Jili Street, Zhongde, Queen's Road. The two sides clashed and were finally suppressed by the police. , 21 students were arrested.
The police's unreasonable arrests aroused social concern, caused dissatisfaction among the citizens, and added new meaning to the student movement that was originally purely anti-American and resisted Japan-anti-colonial movement and fighting for the rights of legitimate demonstrations.
Prior to this, the image of student demonstrators was often a criminal who caused troubles and undermined social peace. For example, the Overseas Chinese Daily reported on the demonstrations under the title of "More than 30 men and women illegally assembled for demonstrations without listening to the police’s advice." The prestige "don't listen to advice," "stick slogans indiscriminately," and "illegal", but they rarely mention the issue of Diaoyutai's sovereignty.
On July 7th, on the 34th anniversary of the Lugou Bridge Incident, the Federation of Students held the "Seven-Seven Demonstrations to Defend Diaoyutai" in Victoria Park. During this period, two to three thousand students were outflanked by the police. Senior Superintendent Willie was holding a baton. The crowd broke into the crowd and injured a number of demonstrators and two journalists-the "The Standard" and the "Sing Tao Daily" photojournalist. In the end, six people were injured, 21 people were arrested, and three motorcycles were burned.
The incident caused a public outcry. The police abuses further increased the anti-colonial sentiment in society, prompting more adults to participate in this social patriotic movement.
Afterwards, the two demonstrations "August, 13" and "September 18" brought the Hong Kong Diaoyu Movement to a climax, and more than 1,000 people participated.
With the government setting aside a number of venues for young people to use for demonstrations, the demonstrations proceeded generally peacefully.
Following the "May 13th" demonstration in 1972 (the last large-scale demonstration), the Kuomintang and Communist government lacked practical actions to resolve the Diaoyutai controversy. The demonstrators had to watch Diaoyutai "return" to Japan on May 15. This patriotic movement In the end, the enemy is no longer the political reality, and it has returned to silence.
As the leading group of the Diaoyu movement, students have more or less traces of rebellion and loss. In the writing of Wang Yaozong, former associate vice president (academic affairs) of Lingnan University and honorary professor of the Department of Political Affairs, the "demonstrators" are long-haired , Wearing skinny jeans and pop art shirts, smoking American cigarettes, but willing to do his best for patriotism, chanting "Down with American imperialism", he described "We are a lost generation."
Behind the movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands are Hong Kong people's knowledge and imagination of the country.
(Reuters)
Reconstruct understanding of the country through demonstrations
This self-contradictory "Westernization" appearance and patriotic behavior can be seen as a crisis of Hong Kong people's identity under the complicated historical background and social environment.
But this identity crisis is not an accidental intervention by the British government, it is actually intentional.
After the founding of New China in 1949 and the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan, the two forces lurked in Hong Kong society and mobilized Hong Kong people’s "anti-colonial sentiment" whenever they had the opportunity.
For example, in the 1950s, there was a disparity between the rich and the poor, and citizens’ dissatisfaction gradually emerged. In 1956, the KMT launched the "Double Ten Riot" because the Resettlement Commission banned the flagging, and the "Six 7 Riots" broke out in 1967. It was a leftist riot that evolved from an initial labor dispute into an "anti-colonial" riot.
The British Hong Kong government is therefore very wary of the activities of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in Hong Kong. It especially guards against the young people who are the main force in the demonstrations. On the one hand, the Hong Kong Week and Hong Kong Festival were held after the June 7th Riot. In 1968, a large-scale summer activity for youths in Hong Kong was held to "groom" the "blood" of young people through social activities.
On the other hand, in order to prevent the KMT ideology and anti-colonialism from penetrating the youth groups, the Chinese Subject Committee appointed by the British Hong Kong Government published the "Report of the Chinese Studies Committee" (Report of the Chinese Studies Committee) in 1953 to promote "de-politics". "Hua" historical education.
This kind of educational direction coincides with the historical views of scholars from the south such as Qian Mu and Sun Guodong. The first Chinese history textbook "Chinese History" edited by the latter was published in 1960. There are ten volumes in total. Ancient history talks about the War of Resistance against Japan. "The spirit of Chinese traditional culture", which is less ideological and heavier in modern history, has stubbornly dispelled the painful national experience and inferiority of the "national ruin and family collapse" in modern history. This "depoliticized" and obscure patriotic ideology The concept of history has been used until the 2017 Chinese History curriculum reform, but it has affected the sense of identity of many generations of Hong Kong people.
In fact, Hong Kong is located on the border of the country and has been far away from the culture of the Central Plains since ancient times. For young people under the British colonial rule, the "spirit of traditional Chinese culture" is undoubtedly a kind of cultural "imagination."
This seemingly "objectively neutral" approach to history is essentially weakening the historical memory and political experience needed for national identity, making it difficult for young people to construct a "community" from the "common destiny", but this ambiguity His identity is just conducive to the peace and stability of colonial society.
Lei Dingming, former dean and emeritus professor of the Department of Economics of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, also pointed out that although Chinese history was compulsory in middle school at that time, the content of modern Chinese history was less, and the young people's understanding of modern China was still vague.
In this way, the "Diaoyu Movement" is more like a patriotic enlightenment movement of Chinese in Taiwan, North America and Hong Kong. They used demonstrations to reconstruct their understanding and imagination of the country, thereby reshaping their personal identity, and how Exploring the road to rebuilding national identity.
On August 15, 2012, Qifeng 2 successfully broke through the ship blockade of Japan Coast Guard. Diaoyu activists boarded the Diaoyutai and planted the flags of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on the island.
(Associated Press)
Political imagination of different spectrums
If the “Diaoyu Movement” in the early 1970s was a patriotic enlightenment movement, after the founding of New China in 1949 and the Kuomintang’s retreat to Taiwan, the demonstrators called “patriotism”, which country they actually loved?
Hong Kong’s "first wave" campaign to protect the Diaoyu Islands is in the "prosperous age" of the Hong Kong student movement. There are three main factions, including the "United Front" (United Front to Defend the Diaoyutai), which is dominated by "Trotskyists" such as Mo Zhaoru, Headed by Chen Yuxiang and others, the Maoist (also known as the Quintessence of the Chinese Communist Party)’s "Guardian Society" (Hong Kong Action Committee to Defend Diaoyutai) and the "Student Union" (Hong Kong Federation of Post-secondary Students) representing the University Student Union.
Wang Zhiming, an associate researcher at the European and American Research Institute of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and a co-appointed associate professor at the Institute of Social and Humanities at Hsinchu Chiao Tung University, pointed out that this involves political imaginations of different spectrums.
Looking through the data, we can indeed distinguish different political imaginations from the steel collars of different student movement groups for the protection of Diaoyu Islands, such as the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial activities of the RUF, and the legal demonstrations; the anti-imperialist and patriotic of the Anti-Diaoyu Association and the unification of China; The "Academic Federation"'s patriotic and land-protection and demonstrations are legal. Although the three are tit-for-tat, they all adopt the consensus of opposing "one China, one Taiwan" as their action consensus and seek the reunification of China.
Even the Hong Kong "trotskyites" who were repeatedly attacked by the quintessential faction because of the divergence of the leftist line-criticized Mao Zedong, opposed the bureaucracy of the CCP, and took the internationalism insisted by Leon Trotsky as the guiding ideology. In 1953 It was cleared by the CCP in 1988 and forced to go into exile in Hong Kong. Faced with the territorial disputes in China, he also proposed the basic consensus that "patriotism does not distinguish between left and right."
In the "70s Biweekly" founded by the Trotskyists, the author Citrix stated clearly: "Although the two factions of China (the Chinese Communist Party) are fighting against each other, they will naturally unite in the event of foreign insults (the Chinese). Therefore, we support Beijing. statement of."
At that time, the CCP's position on the Diaoyutai controversy was extremely clear. The official media "People's Daily" published articles on December 4 and December 29, 1970 denounced Japan, "The reactionaries not only deliberately plundered my country's seabed resources, but also tried to make the Diaoyu Islands belong to China. Some of the islands and waters of China have been included in Japan's territory... If the U.S.-Japan reactionaries insist on going their own way, they will inevitably lift a rock and drop them in the foot."
However, in the logic of the Taiwanese Kuomintang government in the 1970s, "patriotism must be anti-Communist." The important thing is to cooperate with the United States, an ally, to counter the CCP.
In the face of Hong Kong’s campaign to protect the Diaoyu Islands, the Taiwan authorities and their supporters regarded the demonstrators as the mouthpiece of the CCP and suppressed them.
This "incompetent" attitude of "fighting in the same room" has promoted the unity of the leftist student groups in Hong Kong, united and united with the outside world, and even the CCP has resolved the Diaoyutai issue.
Wang Zhiming pointed out that the national connotation involved in the preservation of the Diaoyu Islands originated from the shared Chinese identity and the imagination of "cultural China." "In this "imaginary China", whether it is the Republic of China or the People's Republic of China, In this era, a relatively vague space is reserved, which is conducive to the development of the Diaoyu movement."
He continued that the movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands in the 1970s was a political practice of young people. It was mainly inspired by the spirit of patriotism to protect the Diaoyu Islands. They did not think about the connotation of "China" in the real political meaning. "They first accepted it. Diaoyutai is China, and I am a Chinese, so I have invested in it without hesitation."
The movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands in the 1970s can be said to be a political practice of young people. It was mainly inspired by the spirit of patriotism to protect the Diaoyu Islands, without thinking about the connotation of "China" in the real political meaning.
(Photo by Lin Ruoqin)
Patriotic enthusiasm turns to "Recognize Ancestor Guanshe"
It is true that during the Diaoyu-Diaoyu movement, compared with the radical and action-oriented "trotskyists", because of the patriotic heritage of the May Fourth Movement, most of the left-leaning Diaoyu-Diaoyu students had an identity and a favorable impression of the CCP.
After 1972, Hong Kong’s national quintessence faction inherited the post-movement patriotism trend and turned the students’ patriotic enthusiasm to the "recognizing the motherland" (knowing the motherland and caring about the society) activities.
At that time, the president of the Student Union of the University of Hong Kong was mostly sent by the Quintessence of the People. In 1973, the president was Chen Yuxiang. In 1974, the President of the Student Union was assigned by the Quintessence to organize the student union positions. It encouraged students to learn more about domestic development and organized a sightseeing tour to reinforce the students’ national identity. .
However, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the fall of the "Gang of Four", and the implementation of reform and opening up in the Mainland, the quintessential faction that has lost the "right to speak" gradually faded out of the political arena.
On the other hand, under the governance of Hong Kong Governor MacLehose, the economy has risen and the quality of life of the citizens has improved. The patriotic and anti-colonial sentiments behind the Diaoyu Movement are no longer, forcing social movement groups to rethink their political lines; In the early ten years, the Chinese democracy movement suddenly emerged. Wei Jingsheng posted a big-character poster "The Fifth Modernization" on the Xidan Democracy Wall in Beijing, demanding that power be kept in the hands of the working people and provided soil for political groups in Hong Kong, which made the original refusal to blindly follow the Communist Party and The "quintessence" and the "socialists" who had doubts about the colonial government emerged in the "red age" and supported the democratization of China.
The social organizations that put forward the lines of "democratic return", "Greater China", and "social participation"-Meeting Point (the predecessor of the Democratic Party) is a typical example.
Its appearance also reflects the shift in the constituent elements of Hong Kong people's identity, from the original "patriotic" passion to democratic reform and caring for Hong Kong society.
The above was published in the 267th "Hong Kong 01" Weekly (May 31, 2021) "Hot Summer". If you want to read the full text, please
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