Detained Chinese Professor Leaks Undisclosed Info to Japan

Beijing, Sept. 26 (Jiji Press)--A Tokyo-based Chinese professor currently detained in China has provided Japan with undisclosed Chinese diplomatic notes on the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, Jiji Press learned Thursday. Zhu Jianrong, a 56-year-old professor at Toyo Gakuen University, was taken into custody by Chinese authorities after arriving in Shanghai in July. Zhu obtained the notes from a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government research institute, and sent them by e-mail to more than 360 people, including Japanese government officials, reporters and businessmen. According to informed sources, Chinese state security authorities have decided to lodge criminal accusations against Zhu on charges of receiving money in exchange for the information leaks. The authorities have been investigating Zhu also on suspicion of illegally gathering information in China and of providing information to Japan, as well as using undisclosed information in his writing. Beijing sees the leaked notes as evidence to back up its assertion that the two countries agreed to shelve the sovereignty issue over the East China Sea islands, also claimed by China. Japan denies such an agreement ever existed. But the security authorities believe Zhu's ties to Japan are overly close, a Chinese source said. Zhu has written widely about his own analyses and opinions at home and overseas on Japan-China relations as well as Chinese politics and diplomacy. In his own periodical dated Jan. 29, Zhu disclosed that some Chinese scholars have published classified diplomatic documents they obtained by themselves and that he himself had acquired some records on the shelving of the Senkaku issue through a CASS scholar. The diplomatic records disclosed in Zhu's publication were notes about a meeting of vice foreign ministers of the two countries in November 1974 and one between the Japanese envoy to China and Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asian affairs chief in April 1978. Zhu also quoted the Japanese officials as saying that leaders of the two countries had already agreed to shelve the island issue. The ministry's archives bureau has only disclosed diplomatic documents from 1965 or earlier. Jiji Press has searched articles from the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, and documents on Japan-China relations made by the Chinese side at the time but found no information about such conversations. Speaking at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo last December, Zhu said he wants to show evidence of a bilateral agreement to shelve the island problem because China claims there was one. He also said Chinese authorities are letting the country's prominent and authoritative scholars read diplomatic documents and transcribe them, adding that the scholars use such information in their own writings. END