Dang Chinese and anti-Japanese protests

Great Debates
1

Not sure where to put this thread, but I can’t really find much of a debate, it is pretty mundane, I have a humble opinion and would like to use profanity. Mods feel free to move wherever

Some relevant cites: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7514819/ and http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050416/ap_on_re_as/china_japan

My father and step mother took a tour to China so they could come see the Chinettes (twin girls born on Christmas eve and elder sister). They skipped the Shanghai tour part to hang out with me and the family, and I’ve been chauffering them back and forth between the hotel and my flat about 5 miles away. Went over to pick them up this morning and immediately hit traffic. That would not be unusual since China is the 3rd biggest auto market these days except it’s a saturday. As I go through the bumper to bumper traffic by the US embassy, I also thought it strange to see the several hundred policemen hanging out. Okie dokie, must be some big meeting or something.

Get down to another main street (Yan’an Xi road) and it’s jammed. Even stranger is the fact there is a cop about every car length on both sides of the road. I know because I could only drive at a snail’s pace. It’s wierd though, because when a big wig is in town, they lock down the roads and you’ll never get to the intersection. But in this case, there is an extremely heavy police presence, but you can still drive. I mean, even during APAC when Bush and the rest of the global cabal were in Shanghai, there were not nearly this many uniformed cops on the street. I’m having a big WTF moment whilst trying to figure out how to get off the main drag but still get around to pick up my parents.

I managed to wind around and broke only a few traffic laws to pick up my parents. Coming home I’m pretty wary and taking relatively uncongested roads. There were cops all over the main drag (Yan’an Xi road closer to Hongqiao), and spaced maybe every ten feet on both sides of a 6 lane road. I notice that the elevated expressway off ramps are not off loading any vehicles.

Almost arranged for the benefit of my visiting parents, we ran straight into the “spontaneous” anti-Japanese protest showing the deep “insult” to Chinese people. That’s when I figured out it what was going on, and managed to whip my pda out and snap a picture of a pretty big crowd of protestors going the opposite direction before getting off the main drag. My parents thought it was pretty cool to see something that was going to be mentioned on CNN later in the day. I thought the traffic was a pain in the ass.

Closer to my home and near the US embassy, we got redirected away from another main street (Huaihai Road) as it suddenly clicked is the location of the old Japanese embassy and is still some sort of official Japanese residence. That only added 5 minutes to what turned out to be about a 2 hour drive (should have been 45 minutes max round trip).

Then I read some news stories talking about how the crowd had broken windows and thrown paint bombs at Japanese restaurants along the route. Of course, the irony is about a 99.99% chance that those “Japanese” restaurants are 100% Chinese owned and operated.

I have asked quite a few Chinese, but haven’t found one yet that has actually read in the original or translation the offending Japanese textbook passages that so “deeply insult the Chinese people.” [BTW, don’t get me wrong, I’m deeply offended by Japanese whitewashing of Chinese history and atrocities that occured, but I wish to og that at least a small % of the protestors would actually read the g*dd**g offending text themselves instead of mindlessly parroting]

Protests are not allowed in Shanghai without the highest level of government approval. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on the government arranging for bus pickup/drop off service to the university district to bring in 10,000 protestors. [BTW, 10,000 protestors is not a lot in a city of 15 million. Christ, the spectacle of my twins in public can gather hundreds in less than 2 minutes.]

My question, if there is one, is what does the outside world think of Chinese stoning embassies, stoning the ambassadors residence, busting the windows out of Japanese restaurants (but Chinese owned), beating up some Japanese students, etc.? Does this help show the Chinese “outrage and insult” of Japanese whitewashing of history? Does this make the Chinese look like mindless communist stooges on the world stage? Do most people in the world think that “yes, I totally agree with China and the Chinese are obviously taking the high diplomatic ground?” Does such protest show that Japan should not be part of the UN security council?

2

I can’t speak to what the rest of the world thinks, but it seems to me that the Chinese are the last people who should be complaining about other countries playing with the historical record to make themselves look good.

3

As far as I know the schoolbooks they protest are only to be used by a very few private schools, and not officially endorsed by the Japanese government. Are we to expect Chinese mobs taking to the streets screaming bloody murder every time a history book is published somewhere on the globe which puts China in a less than bright light?

I think it show a Chinese mob protesting an incident which while barbarous absolutely pales in comparison with some of the things the Chinese communists have done to themselves in the years after the war and which they themselves are happily glossing over, as well as a Chinese government engaging in a bit of proxy politics by using the demonstrations, which are clearly allowed & thus encouraged if not directly organised by the government, as an obvious front to further some political goal re. Japans inclusion in the Security Council or the disputed territory between Japan and China – the Chinese government doesn’t give a damn about so history books used by some obscure private schools in some other nation, they’re just milking the demonstrations for what they’re worth. Also it is another example of a rising Chinese nationalism and in particular the victim-nationalism the Chinese seems to be embracing so wholeheartedly.

It also seems like the Chinese government is trying to let a bit of steam of the pressure cooker of internal Chinese unrest by projecting it out towards a, for themselves, harmless targets.

So far the Japanese seem to have handled it with remarkable restraint. If anything it shows them ready for a Security Council seat.

Of course. YMMW

4

From here it looks like there’s a real problem with Japan re not only China but South Korea. There were also protests in South Korea over the same thing, and territorial disputes have broken out as well between Japan and both China and South Korea.
Everyone’s getting increasingly nationalistic over there, it seems. Not a good thing.

5

The Chineses leadership has increasingly pushed Xenophobia in order to pave over the fact that few Chinese seem satisfied with the elite’s rule anymore.

Here’s another view.

http://blog.ianhamet.com/index.php/archive/2005/04/16/951/
6

Hmm. The following article from Asia Times Online agrees with the cynical interpretation:

7

Something tells me that tens of thousands of protestors don’t spontaneously appear on the streets in China. Last time that happened things got ugly. I think that this is a government-orchestrated attempt to raise the ante on Japan’s bid to join the Security council. It’s the equivalent of the local loanshark saying “Nice-looking family you got there…it’d be a shame if somethin’ should happen to 'em…”

I think it also serves to have a nice, convenient, and conveniently-located enemy to divert people’s rage against, lest they take a jaundiced look at their own country’s dismal human rights record, rampant corruption, and stifling of dissent.

8

here in tokyo this is on all the sunday morning talk programs complete with video from within mobs at the consulate, attacks on japanese retail, etc.

the comment by smiling bandit rings true to me. npr reports that the events are NOT reported in prc media. so the chinese authorities are NOT allowing information to get out to a wider national audience. this suggests their desire to control and contain the demonstrations. the are useful to a point. they helping elite and upwardly moble youth to bond with the “patriotic chinese state” as a way of diminishing the crimes perpetrated by the prc upon its own people. but they would not want a general encouragement of a ‘protest moment’ to move forward.

history is always useful for symbolic leverage and manipulation.

i’ll go over to yasukuni shrine now and see what if anything is the tone. cherry blossoms have peaked now though.

9

Just drove by the Japanese consulate residence, and there are at least 50 uniformed police within 100 meters and the actual gate is blocked off with tape so that pedestrians have to walk into the street instead of on the public sidewalk. There are more police than normal on the main street intersections for a sunday morning.

As for news coverage, I haven’t seen the morning paper yet. Looked at several websites that are covering the visit of the Japanese foreign minister to Beijing. It is reported that there have been demonstrations in various places and that China has pledged to protect Japanese property and persons in China.

Do keep in mind that this will be all over Chinese message boards, blogs, chatrooms, etc. Also that these news stories are not blocked in China, including Chinese language sites abroad.

So whilst not directly covered in the Chinese mainland media, the info or at least rumors are widely available.

I find it pretty hard to find anyone that I normally talk with to buy into the idea that just maybe China has the high moral ground with the Japanese whitewashing of history, but that they lose the moral ground by busting windows and overturning cars. China’s opportunity to become a more global statesman is once again passed to play to the domestic cheap seats.

10

So if these protests are engineered by the politicos, is it a wise idea to give Joe/Wang Average a taste of political change through protest and civil agitation?

11

From whose point of view?

12

The governments’. They wouldn’t want this sort of thing in Shanghai, I imagine. Why would the gov’t want to encourage protest and civil unrest against Japan or anyone, lest it be turned against themselves one day? Or are they that confident in the love of the average citizen that they would not turn against their rule?

Not that I’m any great fan of the Chinese government, just playing Devil’s advocate

13

The group that wrote the controversial textbook (the Society for History Textbook Reform) has said that they’re going to post full Chinese and Korean translations of the textbook on their website sometime next week. I hope they’ll post the original Japanese text or an English translation so that I get a chance to read it.

When I visited China last year I heard a fair amount of anti-Japanese comments when those Chinese I met learned that I spoke Japanese and lived in Japan. I also detected what I thought was an inferiority complex towards Japan… I was asked lots of questions such as “why didn’t you study Chinese?” and “why don’t you want to live in China?”

One of the links said that this anti-Japanese sentiment was a result of the Chinese school system. Is that accurate?

14

Hong Kong’s march starts in an hour (ie 3pm). Some interesting ideas on the level of official encouragement and the issue of Japanese schoolbooks and links…

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050417_2.htm

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050412_1.htm

15

spent part of the day in hibiya koen across the street from the ministry of foreign affairs (in fact walked through kasumigaseki and toronomon) no sense of any greater security than usual on a lovely spring afternoon. as usual on a weekend the ministry district was quiet. never made it to yasukuni as the wife had shopping ideas.

16

No. As Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev found out, you can’t be half a tyrant, and you can’t run half a tyranny.

17

Calling Gorbachev is tyrant makes my head hurt.

He knew what he was doing.

18

No he did not. He never intended for communism to fail or the Soviet to disintegrate. He was basically a failure. Though a fortunate one.

19

Oh…the whole outrage is bogus as already described, and is an implicit threat to Japan over both the Security council, as well s noises from Japan that it agrees with the American view should (when?) China invade Taiwan.

At heart, the Chinese and Koreans (and Phillipinos) all have a legitimate beef with Japan over it’s half-hearted attempt to avoid its militaristic past.

I think the worst thing the Japanese could do now (in the eyes of the Chinese), and one I think they should do, is to offer a profound, sincere, and all-encompassing apology to all those who suffered. They should make a unit of Japan’s role and actions in WWII a mandatory part of the High School Curriculum.

Why? Well, first, it’s the right thing to do. They were bastards; people suffered horribly and the survivors deserve to hear them acknowledge it. Sure there’ll be some loss of face, but that will probably most keenly felt by the ultra-right nationalist yahoos, so it’s a win-win situation. Exposing Japanese kids to the truth about their past will result in the same level of ennui that their American counterparts experience when they learn about the slave trade, so I wouldn’t worry about a national loss of self-esteem.

Finally, it will take the wind from China’s sails and deprive them of the bogey-man they need to cover the fact that they’re, you know…dicks.

20

No, he didn’t. Many people seem to view him as a “great reformer”, but he presided over a tyranny and only attempted to introduce partial reforms which came back to bite him on the arse. He never intended the collapse of communism or the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Like I said, you can’t be half a tyrant: if you want to grind people under your iron heel, you can’t let them up for tea and biscuits occasionally, and I suspect the Chinese government are going to learn this to their cost.