As the rusting freighter KIEN HWA NO. 2 chugged toward a sprinkling of rocks in the East China Sea last week, its journey was little more than a symbolic gesture. On board were 18 people from Taiwan and Hong Kong, intent on showing their fury over Japan's claim to what they know as the Diaoyu Islands and Japanese call the Senkaku Islands. The bulk of the ship's passengers were journalists, 42 of them.

Protest turned to tragedy, however, after a flotilla of Japanese coast guard ships turned back the Kien Hwa. Just a few kilometers from shore, four activists jumped overboard to claim symbolically the waters for China. The waters, however, were unusually rough, and the life-jacketed men had to be rescued by the ship's crew. Three of the protesters survived. The fourth--David Chan, 45, head of the Hong Kong contingent--was dead.

Chinese nationalism thus gained a martyr, and the world was reminded how spirited that cause can be. Nationalism is an important component of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's philosophy of a "spiritual civilization" for China. But his intention is to fill the gap in the national psyche that used to be occupied by socialism, not to encourage provocative gestures against neighbors such as Japan. "Sovereignty is sovereignty," says Tsang Kin-shing, a Hong Kong legislator who made a similar protest voyage to the islands earlier in the week. "It's not an issue on which you can compromise."

The dispute is over five uninhabited islands claimed by China, Taiwan and Japan. Historical titles go back to the 19th and even the 16th centuries, but the U.S., which ended up with the islands following World War II, gave them to Japan in 1972 after ending American occupation of Okinawa. Japan kicked off the current dispute during the summer by declaring a 12-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the islands. In July a Japanese right-wing group constructed a 5-m-tall, solar-powered aluminum beacon on the islet of Kita Kojima. The next month, another group hoisted a flag on a nearby island. The protesters from Hong Kong and Taiwan were determined to pull those symbols down. Officials in Tokyo, Beijing and Taipei, on the other hand, would clearly prefer to settle the matter quietly.

The issues for those governments are sovereignty, fishing rights and a potential reserve of oil beneath the seabed. But for ordinary Chinese, whether on the mainland or in Hong Kong or Taiwan, the Diaoyus have become a rallying point for the defense of national pride, as well as an excuse to demonstrate an enduring dislike for the Japanese, their wartime masters. "Japan is the only country that shows no remorse for its role in World War II," says Tsang, who describes his own excursion to the Diaoyus as a replay in miniature of China's wartime humiliation. "I could see part of my sovereign country in front of me," he recalls, "and a Japanese warship behind me." Complains Mao Ke, an advertising executive in Beijing: "We just don't think the Japanese get it. They still can't deal with other people on equal footing."

In Japan interest in the issue is low, although the government has been criticized for not reining in the right-wingers. Officials say they lack the legal power to do so, especially since four of the five islands are technically the private property of two Tokyo businessmen. Toyohisa Eto, head of the ultranationalist Japan Youth Federation, which erected the beacon, reasons that his members were just doing their duty: "The Japanese government is too frightened of China to put up a lighthouse, so we had to do it." Taiwan has provided funding and boats for its agitators but is simultaneously working behind the scenes with Japan to find some resolution to the row. Hong Kong's emergence as a center of protest in favor of a mainland Chinese cause is an unusual twist: many of the activists are politicians who have challenged Beijing's plans for Hong Kong once it becomes Chinese territory next July.

An even bigger contradiction can be found on the mainland. Officially, China protested that Japan had "grossly violated" its sovereignty, but Beijing is determined to keep ordinary Chinese from making similar protests. The government has turned down all applications for public demonstrations on the issue. In early September it decided to remove the danger of anti-Japanese agitations in Beijing by spiriting away nearly a dozen of the likely leaders. Tong Zeng, head of a campaign for war reparations from Japan, was taken to the remote northwestern province of Qinghai, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman announced last week that Tong was conducting research for the China Geriatric Society.

Although President Jiang is making a crusade of public patriotism, he's understandably nervous about promot ing any cause that brings students or workers together in the streets. He and his colleagues are worried that once public protests begin, they won't stop at the issue of the Diaoyu Islands or Japanese war crimes, but will inevitably turn against the communist leadership itself. "It's the U.S. yesterday, Japan today--and the Chinese government tomorrow," says a Chinese journalist. "That's what the leaders fear."

--Reported by Sandra Burton/Hong Kong, Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing and Irene M. Kunii/Tokyo