Chinese Government: No Anti-Japanese Hate During Olympics
According to the Washington Times (via Foreign Policy), the Chinese government is taking measures to ensure that locals attending next year’s summer Olympics will not embarrass their country. Shouting obscenities, booing during opposing countries’ national anthems, and banners with insults on them, all of which have been pretty common at smaller scale international matches held in China prior to the 2008 Olympics, are being discouraged in favor of official government sanctioned cheering styles:
At a field hockey test event this summer between Argentina and Australia, hundreds of middle-age women were bused in to add atmosphere ・the kind of instant numbers only China can muster. The women tried to imitate cheers in Spanish but got it wrong.
“Ba mao si fen han de di le,” they chanted, which in Chinese could roughly mean: “Eighty-four cents, you’ve offered a price too low.” Nobody could figure out what this had to do with field hockey.
If there’s trouble, it could come in soccer ・or any team event in which Japan participates. Chaos erupted in Beijing in 2004 after Japan defeated China to win Asia’s national soccer title. Japan’s women’s soccer team was peppered with insults three months ago at the women’s World Cup in China, and fans jeered Japan’s national anthem.
Shouting obscenities at opposing players is common in Chinese soccer. Beijing’s top club, Guo’an, plays at the Feng Tai stadium, which is draped with signs urging good behavior. Dozens of closed-circuit cameras have been added in the past few years, and the police presence has increased severalfold.
“Be civilized when you watch the match. Don’t get angry about the results,” one banner reads.
Cameras also will dot each Olympic venue, many looking down on the crowd from the ceiling. Organizers say they may dress police and soldiers in volunteer uniforms to ensure order.
“We are not going to shout profanities in front of foreigners because the Olympics is a show for foreigners,” said Lui Wei, a spectator at a recent Guo’an game.
“The government has told us it’s not polite,” the 21-year-old said. “The government wants to show a good image of the country.”
The rude and hateful reactions of Chinese spectators have offended Japanese sports fans for years now, but the Chinese government is only taking action now because millions of spectators in non-Japanese countries will be watching China/Japan matches on their televisions. Hopefully their new policies will make things cleaner and will last beyond the Olympics.
For a few examples of Chinese crowd treatment of Japan, I googled my way to the Japanese soccer blog soccerundergound.com and found these pictures:
This woman is carrying a sword with an anti-Japanese slogan on it, and she yells death threats at the camera:
A team China supporter shouts that he will kill the Japanese:
The crowd that guy was in starts chanting insults directed at the Japanese:
China blog EastSouthWestNorth has also blogged about the anti-Japanese cheers of Chinese fans during the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, mentioning an extraordinary reaction from the Japanese:
When the Japanese women’s soccer team unfurled a banner of gratitude at the Hangzhou Huanglong Stadium, it belied what had happened for 90 minutes before. Japan, trying desperately to get into the knockout phase of the women’s World Cup, had to endure not only the onslaught by reigning champions Germany on the pitch, but also a chorus of abuse from the almost 40,000 spectators, who had come not so much to cheer the Europeans but to jeer their Asian neighbours.
In this group A finale in the coastal city of Hangzhou 13 days ago, heckling and booing threatened to bring down the roof whenever the Japanese gained possession. A huge German flag was passed around the stands by a mostly Chinese, 39,817-strong crowd. The overwhelming partisan support for the Germans – who won 2-0 – coupled with obscenities directed at the Japanese, certainly raised a lot of eyebrows. “People paid a proper standing tribute to the German national anthem but once the strains of the Japanese anthem set in, most of them sat down and booed,” said a German journalist. “To be honest, it was really impolite.” Yet the Japanese women were undaunted. They returned to the pitch after the final whistle, held up a banner reading “Thank you China” and bowed to the stands in all directions.
[...]
“There is no doubt that Japanese athletes will have to live with the hostility [at the Beijing Olympics],” said Tong Zeng, a leading activist in the campaign to defend China’s sovereignty over the Diaoyu islands. “The resentment is justified and a natural response towards a sports team representing a former invader that denies its tainted past.” Asked whether the goodwill banner by the Japanese women conjured any sympathy, Tong replied: “It’s a heart-warming display of kindness, but again I don’t think it will do much to put an end to the heckling.”
It’ll be very interesting to see how the 2008 Olympics turn out.
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They’re taking this game way to seriously.
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Hate, hate, hate…
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Of course they won’t hate on Japan….what’s next? Human rights??
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I agree that such displays of emotion are utterly out of place in politically-unrelated sporting events such as these, but it must be said that the Chinese are probably seizing the only opportunity they have to publicly express their discontent against Japan.
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Actually they are allowed to publicly express their discontent… only against Japan.
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ponta:
I wouldn’t know, but let me put it this way.
If I were the PRC government, I will offically ban anti-Japanese protests, but I will not bother if you do protest. The Chinese rarely protest so virulently against any other teams for that matter. I guess if given a chance, I wouldn’t be surprised if some rabid Chinese fan will use their (substandard) weapons to attack the Japanese in the middle of the match. Just hope it will be caught live on camera, to show what the supporters really are.
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The Chinese were not anti-Japanese at all in the 80ies. Japan ranked as No.2 favored nations among Chinese (after US) in those days.
I remember Chinese students in Tokyo laughing about the Koreans, saying “Icredible childish! They still bitch about something that happened even before you were born!”
That was in the early 90ies.
Several years later,after Jiang Zemin came to power that changed all.
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Yes, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Massacre of Tiananmen Square and The collapse of the Soviet Union, Jiang Zemin spread anti-Japan education all over China to protect the communist regime. The economic growth and anti-Japan nationalism have become the last justifications for the CCP’s continuing monopoly on power.
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Do you know about literature relating to chinese nationalism and anti-japanese attitude in china? The subject interests me, but somehow there seems to be no great research efforts about it.
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“China”by Susan L. Shirk includes good articles about how Chinese nationalism hurts the relation with Japan and the United States.
If you can read Japanese I would recommend “中国はなぜ「反日」になったか”(Why has China become anti-Japan?)by 清水 美和
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Buster
I too recommend you read “China” by Susan L. Shirk.
http://www.amazon.com/China-Superpower-Internal-Politics-Peaceful/dp/0195306090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197108420&sr=1-1
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In this book: http://www.amazon.com/Nanjing-Massacre-History-Historiography-Asia/dp/0520220072/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1197201445&sr=11-1
Daqing Yang has a very good article discussing one heated source of anti-Japanese sentiment in China (the Nanjing Massacre) and the implications Anti-Japanese sentiment in China has for China’s domestic situation as well as its international relations.
This book is arguably one of the very few balanced looks at the subject of the Nanjing Massacre.
Daiqing Yang has a couple other articles out in publications dealing with the subject of Anti-Japanese sentiment as well.
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I’m taking “Modern Japan” class in college, but the professor teaches more about Sino-Japanese relationship than Japan culture. Myy professor is married to a Chinese woman, and he is fluent in Chinese. He is so bias, and I want to debate with him but then I don’t want to risk my grade in his class.
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“He is so bias[ed], and I want to debate with him but then I don’t want to risk my grade in his class”
Any professor who would take marks off for disagreement (expressed civilly) probably deserves a disciplinary hearing. Your college presumable doesn’t have the room or budget to hire a Japanese specialist, which is not uncommon. However he should stick to the subject he is supposed to teach.
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Why do news reports love to get inflammatory comments from extremists, like this Spratley Islands guy, and let them spout off nonsense without checking it? “Denies its tainted past”? So since when did Kobayashi Yoshinori et al become the official government spokesmen, let alone the majority viewpoint among historians?
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The media prefers DRAMA to debate. (You can thank the Sea Shepherds for that, while they are still alive trying to ‘protect’ a certain mammal)
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“The resentment is justified”…
Justified my ass. Grow up, China and get over yourselves.
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Its pretty pathetic that Chinese fans need to be told to behave themselves. Not really news though. They’ll probably act up again during the Olympics.
The fact is that by fanning flames of anti-Japanese sentiment they are only making their nation look like animals.
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i actually hope some chinese hooligans act up during the olympics. itll show the world what china is really like. as if we didnt know already…it still baffles me why the olympics is being held in a country that denies human rights and a corrupt gov’t that feeds its citizens stuff like anti-jap propaganda just to keep it afloat.
everyone except the chinese are classy when it comes to sports…i have a feeling the olympics is gonna be a real shitfest when it comes down to chn v jpn
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“everyone except the chinese are classy when it comes to sports”, way to overgeneralise, I recall English hooligans on many occassions tearing places apart and causing problems in other peoples countries, Italian and Argentine football hooliganism as well as Greek. I remember there were shootings at the Olympics in the USA, I could go on for a very long time here. You see what you want to see (which is very linear) and ignore everything else. What about the way the English react to Germans? Or should I say to pretty much any other country. There are things like this in virtually every country. I dont condone what the Chinese did to the Japanese, being half japanese myself, but if you are going to criticise someone, then be in the position to do so yourself. Chances are I could tear into your country too and paint a very ugly picture.
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Hazukashii is correct. Racism in football has been an issue for a long time. Not just in China either.
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Hooliganism and hate in sports games are always bad; I don’t care if people hate the country, but there is a certain level of respect that should be shown when observing a game — especially when playing the national anthem.
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What’s funny is a lot of the “protests” against Japan are led by the Chinese government. Obviously the Chinese government doesn’t allow protests unless it wants them (can we say “Tianenmen Square”, anybody?)
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It saddens me to see billions of people so swayed by the anti-Japanese sentiments, fed to them by the government. Like someone said above, in the 1980s things were great between the two countries. Japanese language was being taught on Chinese TV, and a lot of Chinese went to Japan to study abroad. Too bad the nationalists of today are simply too young, too ignorant and/or too blinded by communist messages to realize their stupidity.
And this is the country where Confucianism and Daoism came from. All those years of great philosophy and education, wasted…
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Well, back then China, as a nation, was pretty poor so the people back then probably just wanted to at least look civilized. Now that China is bloody rich (but yes, no need to remind me of the numerous 3rd world countryfolk) and every nation is feeling the weight of it’s industry, I’m sure they are simply not holding back anymore.
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In other words, they stop wanting to look civilised once the money is there… how ignorant, as they would probably sully the image of the Chinese as a cultured society. I guess money changes people…
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China isn’t rich so much as it has a lot of rich people in it. And even more poor ones. Japan wants to talk about the kakusa shakai? Look west….
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Well sports just suck period, so anything that makes sports look bad just puts a smile on my face.
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While I don’t agree with what is being done, I do think that this sort of thing may be “good” for Japan (like castor oil could be good for health – nasty but serves a purpose).
The Japanese in many cases react to their Asian neighbors as if there were no meaningful consequence to their stance regarding their actions against them in WW II. Incidents like this show that they can be put in a position where it does matter and they can’t arrogantly assume that economic interests will over-ride long-held bitterness over their actions. Up to now, that has been pretty much the case. With the Olympics looming, maybe Japan will be compelled to reconsider their attitude as complete victims of WW II (and not aggressors) and as the top of the heap among Asian countries.
Part of me feels it’s pathetic that the politicians in Japan put the athletes in this position because they must continue to pander to the rightists and extremists. If they’d print true history in textbooks and stop visiting Yasukuni shrine, this would clear up.
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Shari:
Highly unlikely that printing the ‘correct’ version of the textbook will being about any major positive change. As it is, there is no sign of Chinese and Japanese historians coming to an agreement on the Sino-Japanese war history, so do not expect any version that would be agreeable to both sides to show up. Even if so, many Chinese would still say that ‘the war crimes are unforgivable’ and so on, so I highly doubt the Chinese would get over the hatred towards the Japanese. Which means, whatever positive change that Japan takes to change its perception of history may not decrease anti-Japanese hatred.
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speaking of attitude as complete victims of WW II it’s nice that china has decided that what happened to them won’t happen to those Darfur you know by undermining sanctions and standing up for the rape victims or pushing the un to action and of course not repressing Tibet or committing cultural genocide of Tibet by actively sending han chinese migrants in order to alter Tibet’s demographic makeup. china whines about so much about the pain japan caused it but does nothing about the pain it causing now is because it needs a boogyman(japan) even though china is becoming a major world power they seem to hold human rights in such contempt.
btw it’s ironic about the germany japan soccer game with the chinese cheering the germany so much i guess they must have rememebered Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany’s July 27 orders for puting down the boxer rebellion:“Make the name German remembered in China for a thousand years so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to even squint at a German” that speech is also where the british get the hun nickname for germans. speaking of telling true history in January 2006, Freezing Point, a weekly supplement to the China Youth Daily newspaper, was closed partly due to its running of an essay by Yuan Weishi, a history professor at Zhongshan University, who claimed modern Chinese history textbooks were glossing over the atrocities committed by the Boxer rebels.
this comes up only because i was reading about the boxer rebellion before i read this posting
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Which “true history” is this, and which textbooks do not carry it?
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There were 8 textbooks approved by the educational ministry in Japan for use in junior high schools.
One of them, the “New History Textbook” was written by a group of Japanese nationalists. South Korea, China and other Asian countries have sharply criticized the Japanese government for approving the book, which critics say distorts history and glosses over atrocities committed by the Japanese military in the years leading up to World War II.
Only one of the eight books mentions the Japanese Imperial army’s enslaving tens of thousands of women in soldiers’ brothels, and none mention the scale of the Nanjing, China, massacre.
from CNN
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What CNN conveniently fails to mention is that this textbook was roundly condemned by teachers and academics, and is used in no more than about 1% of schools nationwide.
I have in fact read this textbook, both editions, and while it may gloss over atrocities, it doesn’t necessarily either ignore them or deny them. The big one, the Nanjing Massacre, is mentioned with the comment that historians are still debating the number of deaths (very true). While it has problems as a textbook, it is far better than the more mainstream stuff these people put out for general consumption that would never get government approval.
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“If they’d print true history in textbooks and stop visiting Yasukuni shrine, this would clear up.”
Give me a break, have you actually compared Chinese and Japanese textbooks?
True history? Who are doing the most sophisticated studies about war crimes during WW2 in Asia?
Chinese, Koreans or the Japanese (US historians base their arguments in many cases on studies of Japanese historian)?
Sorry, Shari but I don’t think that I am the one here who has to read more books to understand the “true” history.
By the way, there are countless apologies by Japanese politician. Every prime minister does this when he meets Chinese or Korean top leaders.
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I see tomojiro has already made my comment for me. He’s right: Japanese historians are very into war crimes and war guilt. It’s the dorky politicians saying things that cause the fuss, not the textbooks (the Tsukurukai one was soundly rejected by a crushing majority of school districts, and even that isn’t that bad compared to some of the real right-wing stuff).
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While that may be true, I think apologies are proving ineffective because it’s not what the majority of the Chinese populace seeks in order to find solace.
The way my Chinese friends and acquaintances have explained it to me, it goes a little something like this:
Much of Japan’s traditional culture was imported from the Middle Kingdom in the past, including things that at first glance seem very natively Japanese, including kimonos, karate, origami, cherry-blossom viewing and whatnot. (I was extremely skeptical about this at first, but research seems to corroborate their claims.)
Then, they feel that Japan has irrevocably tarnished China’s pride by not only invading a large part of it, but also by committing such atrocities as the Nanking Massacre, the workings of Unit 731 and the whole comfort women debacle.
And when Japan was finally defeated, when they thought justice was finally going to be delivered, Japan got off scot-free and even received American aid in rebuilding their nation and their economy whereas China had to fend for itself following an invasion and a civil war.
Fast-forward fifty years and it seems like the roles of victor and defeatee have been completely reversed: Japan is praised worldwide as being an exotic and prosperous nation with a unique culture and China is scorned upon by all for being dirty commies (though the trend seems to have slowly abated nowadays, being increasingly replaced by growing dread of its rising power and influence).
From what I’ve gathered, it looks like the Chinese (at least those living and educated in the West; I haven’t had many chances to speak with mainland Chinese about such touchy topics) are resentful that the status of their civilization in the minds of people worldwide has been “usurped” by Japan, as well as the fact that the latter seems to enjoy playing this to its advantage.
Apparently, while some Chinese still vie for retribution, most know that it’s unrealistic to hold today’s Japanese accountable for past events, but still must carry the burden of having their national pride shat on during the better part of the past two centuries. It’s very hard to hate the innocent.
The contemporary controversies of Yasukuni and the textbooks are supposedly merely outlets for those who must express their discontent and most Chinese supposedly don’t much care what kind of education the Japanese are getting.
The silent majority/vocal minority rule applies no matter where you live, I guess.
I’ve seen some pretty angry comments here directed at the Chinese in general. To those concerned, I certainly hope you aren’t stupid enough to believe that all Arabs are terrorists.
Anyways, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the full story here, so if anyone can fill me in on the rest, it’d be much appreciated. The Japanese people I’ve spoken to don’t seem to know that much about the Pacific side of things during WWII and we end up talking about Japanese concentration camps in America and whatnot. =/
Long comment, I know. Thanks for your time.
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I don’t think you have talked to enough Japanese people about what happened to them during the war. Try harder. You can find plenty of people who actually lived during the period and most of the time they are generally open about their experiences of war and the guilt they dealt with after learning about the truth of things. Yes, guilt.
Often times I hear about Japan stealing this and stealing that from China, but for the most part Japan and Korea have far similarities than Japan and China. To be honest this has little to do with discussion is more an attempt to blame Japan for some other slight to Chinese national pride.
As for tarnishing the national pride of China, much of the blame for that lies with Emperess Dowager Cixi and her inability to cope with the times. Sure China started to modernize and produce its own armaments, but in the end her reluctance to follow the advice of some foreward looking nobles led to China’s downfall. Later on, Japan was taking part in the rage at the time, Imperialism, and found itself committing terrible crimes in China that rivaled those of the Nazis. This is all the truth. Its not as simple as saying Japan tarnished China’s reputation.
China’s status as a great naton was brought down by the very thing that made it a great nation, as well as a unified one to begin with; over-whelming power centralized in the hands of an Emperess. Ironically, it was the same sort of power, or rather the unquestioned respect of authority, that lead Japan down the road to war. The destruction of China by Japan was the rock bottom of a downward trajectory that began well before Second Sino-Japanese war. Many are to blame. The Japanese people of today are not among those.
As far as your victor/defeatee dichtomy is concerned, I’m not so convinced that your math is correct. The Japanese people at large had been subjected to many years of austere living during the war. They certainly were not the beneficiaries of immediate post-war aid from the US either. Even pre-80’s Chinese high school textbooks taught that like the average Chinese person during the Second Sino-Japanese, Japanese people were also victims of their own government’s aggressive actions. That speaks volumes of the PRC’s stance towards Japan during that era.
No one with a shred of credibility should deny that Japan caused great suffering to the Chinese people, but to say that Japan has been rewarded for their behavior during the war is silly. What Japan as a nation benefitted from was US protection and rebuilding plan that was similar to the Marshall Plan in Europe. Both of these plans were designed to turn their respective beneficiaries into bullwarks against the spread of Communism.
I understand where you are coming from, but in my opinion if I was Chinese I would be far more angry at Mao for starting the Cultural Revolution and bringing to life the war on the ‘Four Olds’ that can more account for Chinese being dispersed out into the war, for the destruction of present Chinese people’s appreciation of their own cultural past and history than Japan.
Overall, China’s story has been very sad. Being attack both from the outside and then from the inside has to be trying for a people. The fact is that China’s people have suffered more than just one defeat in the past century.
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I don’t know how old shazzb0t is.
From my memory, Chinese weren’t such hate mongers in 70’s – 80’s.
It changed after Tiannamen massacre.
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan both raised extreme nationalism before entering the big war.
China(and Korea too?)’s current situation is very similar to them.
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Not sure what my age has to do with anything really. And I don’t believe Chinese at large are hate-mongers either. I specifically wrote that during the before the 80’s (I meant 90’s) China had a much lighter stance towards Japan.
Sadly, I think you maybe right about China’s current nationalism becoming dangerous to peace in the region.
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Regardless of the truth, what Zero said is actually a very good written summary of what most Chinese, who feel disdainful to Japanese, feels. Well, at least that’s what I felt, but wouldn’t have worded it as organized as Zero; nicely put.
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There were 8 textbooks approved by the educational ministry in Japan for use in junior high schools.
One of them, the “New History Textbook” was written by a group of Japanese nationalists. South Korea, China and other Asian countries have sharply criticized the Japanese government for approving the book, which critics say distorts history and glosses over atrocities committed by the Japanese military in the years leading up to World War II.
Only one of the eight books mentions the Japanese Imperial army’s enslaving tens of thousands of women in soldiers’ brothels, and none mention the scale of the Nanjing, China, massacre.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/04/japan.textbook/index.html
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Nancy:
Almost every country in the world teaches its children a version of history that does not focus on bad things those particular countries did.
Official Chinese textbooks do not mention the millions who died because of Mao’s policies or Tienanmen Square, nor do Russian textbooks mention the tens of thousands of rapes committed by Soviet troops during the capture of Germany at the end of World War II. Likewise, American history textbooks do not focus on the horrific civilian casualties caused by US bombs in WW2 and Vietnam, nor do they mention the US occupation forces’ cooperation in the setting up of “comfort women” brothels for US troops in Japan.
Japan’s history textbooks are far from perfect, but one can at least appreciate that the postwar Japanese education system has made the Japanese population strong supporters of pacifism, rather than teaching them to bear grudges against other nationalities over historical issues.
——-
In any case, I’ve found that your user id and e-mail match a user I banned last year for posting identical comments directing readers of several China-related posts on JapanProbe to your personal Nanking-obsessed rant blog, so I’ve re-banned you.
I do not deny that the Nanking Massacre or Japan’s other internationally-recognized wartime atrocities took place. As I believe Overthinker pointed out, JapanProbe does not have many articles about Japanese war crimes because every educated person already knows about those events, and there’s no need for me to repeat what has already been written in hundreds of books and on thousands of websites.
However, I am opposed to allowing ranters to shamelessly promote their personal websites, especially when the website in question is lacking in any meaningful content related to a disccussion taking place on this site.
It’s no use crying over spilled milk.
覆水盆に返らず。
結局は後の祭りだ。
This is just a case of holding the son accountable for the sins of the father. Get on with life and develop as a human being. Those who are ignorant-by-choice will remain so, and a lot of the rest of us are tired of people dredging up the past in an effort to strengthen their current personal agenda or prejudices.
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