China Should Support the Ryukyu Independence Movement

Many people, in regards to Japan’s troublemaking on the Diaoyutai Islands, imagine that America wants to provoke confrontation between Japan and China. Who doesn’t know that the Japanese government wants to strike China as a display for America? Japanese people are extremely disgusted and dissatisfied with American long-term occupation, especially the military bases on Okinawa on which the Japanese government has failed to keep their promises to the people. The U.S. occupation of Japan has deepened the antagonism between the government and residents of Okinawa, adding fuel to the flames of the Ryukyu independence movement.

From 1879 to 1945, Japan’s bloody reign of the Ryukyu Islands led to great resentment among the people. In April of 1945, the Japanese government learned they had to accept the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Declaration and return all territory which had been occupied by Japan. Suddenly, on the account of “worrying the Ryukyu slaves led the Chinese to liquidate Japan,” the government transmitted the so called “prefer death to dishonor order.” This ordered all local garrisons to kill all Ryukyuans. According to incomplete statistics, before the American military seized Okinawa, the Japanese military massacred a total of over 260,000 Ryukyuans. This massacre is only second in size to that of the Nanjing Massacre. 27 years later, American forces gave control of Okinawa back to the Japanese government. This act, to the Okinawan people, was a bolt from the blue. They called in vain for help but are only able to silently oppose. Therefore, during the last 38 years, the Okinawan people have not stopped their anti-Japanese and anti-American struggles.

However, Japan not only didn’t go pacify the Okinawan people’s mood; they continued to treat the people as an underclass by establishing a brutal colonial domination. In 1978, the Japanese scholar Nakamura from economic dependent area found concrete data that reached the conclusion that Okinawa was an “Internal Colony.” Again in 1982, another Japanese scholar, Yamasaki Hitoshi, from the “Internal Colony” concluded furthermore that the “domestic dependent area suffered from exploitation, pillaging, suppression, alienation, biased treatment.” They attempted to evade the principal contradiction of national aggression and ethnic minority oppression, but they forgot Okinawa possesses 1,000 years of sovereign and independent history as a nation. It was only annexed by Japan through force in 1879. In Japan, after its unconditional surrender and handover of Okinawa, Japan reclaimed the island. Its “Internal Colony” formulation is unable to stand firmly. Adding the word “domestic” to “colonial aggression” does not change its essence. It’s similar to a rapist committing a rape: No matter if he says it is “indoor” rape or “outdoor” rape, it always is rape. Okinawa’s independence struggle already is not only Okinawa’s problem, but rather a big global question of how to liberate an oppressed people.

According to the “Okinawan Revolutionary Comrade’s” statement: “Thousands of years ago, relations between China and Ryukyu, political, economic, cultural, ideology, and customs, all originate from China. Even blood relations and family. Most of the Ryukyu system’s people moved in from the Fujian region of China; there are only a few from Korea that moved in. The so-called 36 surnames’ descendants stretch long and unbroken up to now occupying more than half of the population.” In short, Ryukyuan people are our flesh and blood compatriots. Our Ryukyu compatriots have fallen into the middle of an abyss of suffering. What reason do we have to stay aloof from this matter? Accept that the Ryukyu independence struggle is in full swing. We have no reason not to lend a helping hand!

Even more touching is one of the main goals of Ryukyu’s independence struggle: the strategic security of China. The Japanese government, in order to display its own sovereignty and strengthen its military, is speeding up the deployment of Japanese land and air forces in the Ryukyus, and continuously stirring up the dispute over the Diaoyutai islands and the East China Sea regions. Japan is attempting to rely on the U.S.-Japan alliance and China’s launching of military resistance to once again treat the Ryukyus as a blockade against China and a forward position to attack China from. The Ryukyu compatriots are at the juxtaposition of working for the sake of the Chinese motherland’s strategic security and Japanese militarism. I said to several Ryukyuan friends, you can comprehend how to get rid of the Japanese, but the American military bases supporting hundreds of thousands of Okinawans and being Ryukyu’s largest ready source of money, why do you have to absolutely expel them? They looked angrily at me and asked in reply, “Mr Tang, you don’t know that the American bases are blockading and assaulting China? On our land and attacking our Chinese motherland! One day, if America does not stop and America and China become enemies and we are starving to death, we cannot let them stay in the Ryukyus.”

After hearing this response, I was moved to tears. If the Chinese society still does not treat the Ryukyu independence struggle as their own, will we feel ashamed to face our Ryukyu compatriots?

(Author is a Department of Commerce Research Institute Japanese Issues Expert.)