Published on May 11, 2019.
Based on Abe Nango’s essay in the March 2017 issue of Sound Argument, this piece sharply examines the possibility that China’s ambitions extend not only to the Senkaku Islands but also to Amami and the Ryukyu Islands, rooted in a tributary-state mentality.
Through remarks by Governor Onaga during his visit to China, Li Keqiang’s view of history, and China’s resource-driven behavior around Japan, it sheds light on Beijing’s broader ambitions in Japan’s surrounding region.

2019-05-11
These are actions taken in pursuit of resources around Japan, and they are nothing other than a continuation of the conduct historically adopted by the Han Chinese after regimes were established in the Central Plain.
The following is from a truly laborious work titled “Governor Onaga’s Astonishing Pro-China Remarks to the Chinese Premier” by Abe Nango, published in the March 2017 issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument.
These are facts that the majority of the Japanese people and all people throughout the world are learning for the first time.
Korean Peninsula affairs researcher and former MITI technical official, Abe Nango.
China Opposes the Registration of “Amami and the Ryukyus” as a World Natural Heritage Site.
The Asahi Shimbun of November 12 last year reported that there was a scene in which China fiercely opposed Japan’s inclusion of “Amami and the Ryukyus” in the domestic candidate list, the “tentative list,” for World Natural Heritage registration at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting held in late October last year.
According to that article, China’s opposition was said to be based on the possibility that the scope of “Amami and the Ryukyus” might be expanded to include the Senkaku Islands.
Reporter Mori Mayumi, who wrote that article, explained that “the Japan-China confrontation over the Senkaku Islands has spilled over even into the arena of World Heritage.”
But was that really China’s only reason for opposing it?
Might it not have opposed it on the basis of a deeper reason?
That “deeper reason” may be that China is opposing it not merely because it claims the Senkaku Islands as its own territory, but because it holds the “true intention” of claiming the entirety of the Nansei Islands, including “Amami and the Ryukyus,” as Chinese territory.
China’s territorial claims are made on the basis of the tributary system of the Ming and Qing periods. This point is also made clear in Nakamura Satoru’s article in the January issue of this magazine, “Does China Regard Okinawa as a ‘Special Autonomous Region’?”
As for the issue surrounding the bases in Okinawa, the Sankei Shimbun of April 12 last year carried on its front page a detailed explanatory article titled “Twenty Years Since the Agreement to Return Futenma Air Base.” At the time this Sankei Shimbun article was published, Governor Onaga Takeshi was flying to Beijing as an “advisory member of the delegation” of the Japan International Trade Promotion Association’s visit to China, chaired by former House of Representatives Speaker Kono Yohei. Since its establishment before Japan normalized diplomatic relations with China, this association has spent sixty years working to promote Japan-China economic relations. And the association’s delegation to China was about to meet with Wang Yang, Vice Premier and a leader of the Chinese Communist regime.
At that meeting, Governor Onaga Takeshi said, “For six hundred years, Okinawa has flourished in an age of trade as a bridge linking Japan, China, and Asia, particularly centered on trade with Fujian Province. As an international logistics hub linking Asia and as a world-class tourist resort, it is developing greatly with Asia as its target.”
These were remarks that would make it sound to Vice Premier Wang Yang as though Okinawa were an independent entity, and they were also remarks that forgot that Okinawa is no more than one region of Japan.
And further, he said, “Since the visit to China in April last year, economic exchange with Fujian Province has been becoming more active through such events as ‘Fujian-Okinawa Week.’ In order for special economic zones to cooperate and develop together, I would like to ask for the understanding of the Chinese government regarding the simplification and acceleration of customs clearance and quarantine procedures in the Fujian Free Trade Zone when exporting Okinawan and Japanese food products.” In this way, he hinted at an atmosphere as though Okinawa Prefecture were within China’s sphere.
Premier Li Keqiang’s View of History.
As was mentioned in those remarks, Governor Onaga had also visited China in April 2015.
On that occasion, at the beginning of a meeting with the association’s visiting delegation in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People, Premier Li Keqiang said, “Over the past two years, Japan-China relations have faced difficult circumstances. However, both sides have the will to improve this.” He then added that the cause of the deterioration in Japan-China relations was that “at its root lies the issue of history.”
Emphasizing the need to face history directly, and unchanged even across the century, he again stressed “the war that in the past caused great damage to the Chinese people,” urging Japan to reflect.
These were remarks as though he had forgotten that after the Chinese Communist regime was established in the Central Plain in 1949, following the last great war, that regime actively waged wars by dispatching troops to the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam.
It was a “view of history” that ignored the history in which, whenever a Han-centered regime was established in the Central Plain, it sent troops into the surrounding countries.
Before the association’s visiting delegation, Premier Li Keqiang said, “The worldwide war, including the war against China launched by the fascists seventy years ago, brought enormous disaster to the Chinese people,” while at the same time flatly declaring, “During these seventy years, no world-scale war has occurred.”
What, then, became of the many wars fought by his own country’s military over those seventy years, advancing north toward the former Soviet Union, west toward India, south toward Vietnam, and east toward the Korean Peninsula, exchanging artillery fire?
And perhaps he does not think that the anti-Japanese riots incited by the Chinese Communist Party, which had a major impact in creating the “difficult circumstances,” were also part of the formation of domestic public opinion for expansion toward the southeast.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist side has created these “difficult circumstances” through military intimidation aimed at acquiring the Senkaku Islands, unilateral gas field development in the median line area of the East China Sea, and the harvesting of red coral off the Ogasawara Islands. These are actions taken in pursuit of resources around Japan, and they are nothing other than a continuation of the conduct historically adopted by the Han Chinese after regimes were established in the Central Plain.
Do these not show that Premier Li Keqiang, as his “historical awareness,” firmly retains the consciousness of the former “tributary system”?
After restraining the Japanese side with these preliminary remarks, Premier Li Keqiang then entered into his main subject.
This article continues.