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Anti-Japanese Protests Held in China

Yesterday was the anniversary of 1931 Mukden incident, and a few protests were held in China demanding that Japan release the Chinese trawler captain who rammed a couple Japanese coast guard vessels:

The Chinese government has tried to keep the protests from getting out of hand by stationing plenty of police around the protesters. They have also censored online postings from citizens attempting to organize protests:

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that protesters had also gathered to demand the boat captain’s return in the northeastern city of Shenyang, previously known as Mukden, where the 1931 attack occurred.

Authorities have sought to forestall protests, blocking the websites of Chinese nationalist groups, telling university students not to protest and erasing discussion of organising demonstrations from the internet.

The website of the China Federation for Defending Diaoyutai remained offline on Saturday, and messages about organising protests over the incident were largely removed from online bulletin boards.

—

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21 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - September 19, 2010 at 10:40 am

Categories: Anti-Japan Tags:

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

You can’t quite see it clearly on that video, but at 0:36, for instance, to the left of the shot the white sign has as the top line “FUCK!”

Just above every Japanese channel had a prominent FUCK!
RMilner

I can’t help but feel that something like the Mukden Incident that happened three generations ago in different countries is really past its sell by date.

Isn’t it time to let go of the artificial hate?

helical

Oh my, how could I have forgotten!
I must go make angry signs so I can go yell things and pump fists in the streets on the 831st anniversary of the Mongolian-led invasion of Japan! Praise the gods for the Kamikaze! Remember northern Kyushu!
Or something like that.

ij487i

Seems like the Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to ensure that these extreme protesters don’t go all out and maintain some semblance of decency..

So much for the groundless claims of the Chinese government “actively inciting anti-Japanese demonstrations” and teaching “anti-Japanese education” in their schools that the mass media in Japan loves to disseminate.

helical

The fact that police were deployed en masse proves nothing regarding the allegations regarding anti-Japanese education.
If the protests turn into a riot and start bashing in windows of the consulate, that just shows that the Chinese government is impotent in maintaining order within it’s own lands, and the party leaders surely couldn’t allow such a sign of weakness to be seen around the world.

ij487i

“The fact that police were deployed en masse proves nothing regarding the allegations regarding anti-Japanese education.”

My point isn’t that police action disproves the allegations of anti-Japanese education, but that there is no sound evidence of such education. As I implied the authorities were deployed to maintain order, as China is wont to do in situations like these. My point is that the Japanese media seems to draw the assumption that existence of riots of extreme protesters like these is proof positive of “anti-Japanese education”, which is ludicrous and does not make any sense if you think about it logically.

So the Chinese government incites anti-Japanese demonstrations by quashing them? (Seems a bit paradoxical.)

More importantly, what do they even mean by “anti-Japanese education”, and what does that have anything to do with protesters acting independently of the government? Do a google search on this term, and most of what you will find will be (big surprise) ultraconservative Japanese commentators, bloggers, newspaper editorials-like the Yomiuri one that James referred to in a previous post-making the same accusation without any tenable evidence to back their claims. I have yet to see any credible report or samples from Chinese textbooks to suggest such education is going on, or any third-party academic papers that critically analyze and discuss this issue with solid factual evidence.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

I don’t base my views on what I see in the Japanese media. I’ve read plenty of academic articles and books about how China’s “patriotic” education system emphasizes victimhood at the hands of a foreign other, most notably Japan. The Chinese education system deliberately whitewashes certain aspects of history (bad things done by Communist China), while teaching the wrongs that foreigners have committed against China in minute detail.

The kind of nationalistic history education that ultraconservatives in Japan advocate is a reality in China. To say that it is simply “anti-Japanese education” is an over-simplification: it is ultra-nationalist education that details the humiliation China faced at the hands of outsiders. Those outsiders include the Western powers and Japan.

China’s pessoptimist identity politics frame historical memory to prime China’s angry youth to explode into popular protests when they feel that China is being humiliated. It analyzes how the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party uses the grand narrative of the Century of National Humiliation to socialize Chinese people into patriots who must continuously struggle against hostile foreign forces. The Central Propaganda Department thus deliberately deploys the pedagogy of national humiliation as part of its patriotic education policy. This chapter examines Chinese-language sources from official and popular culture to explain how patriotic education is a moral campaign that teaches people how and what to feel – humiliation, hatred, and revenge are common themes. Long after the Century of National Humiliation ended in 1949, the pessoptimist historical narrative still provides the template that encourages militant Chinese reactions to conflicts both in the present and in the future.

-William A. Callahan, Professor of International Politics and China Studies at the University of Manchester, and Co-Director of the British Inter-University China Center at Oxford University [a respected academic, not an ultraconservative]

There are countless books and articles that make the same basic case as Professor Callahan.
helical

So the Chinese government incites anti-Japanese demonstrations by quashing them? (Seems a bit paradoxical.)

No I think it does makes sense.
If the there is a risk of a backlash from the populace due to whatever unpopular actions the government has taken, and when the government knows this, it’s not just China that a government will seek an external enemy to focus the anger and frustrations of the population on.

Right now, due to the breakneck pace of economic development, which I’ve seen referred to as hyper-capitalistic, as well as rampant corruption, there is already an extreme difference in quality of life between the rich and the poor. If left alone, this is going to explode with very unpleasant results for the Chinese Communist Party.
What better way to offset the brunt of the anger than to prepare a convenient enemy right next door that has indeed wronged the country less than a century ago? Feed the population false versions of the news demonizing Japan, call Japan dangerously militaristic (oh the irony) and preparing to invade once again, intimidate or make examples of people who disagree, and voila, you have a larger-than-life threat that will demand all the attention from the otherwise discontented populace.
It’s only in the last two decades or so that a dramatic shift in the education textbooks has been reported. Up until then, while China was still struggling to get on its feet in the global economy and Japan-China relations had an air of relaxed friendliness to it. Then as China started to become economically successful, the new middle class gained access to more information and started having doubts about the status quo, culminating in Tianamen Square in 1989. Only then did the CCP under Jiang Zemin make a shift in the education policy to cast Japan as the main antagonist in the narrative of the CCP being the saviour for the country surrounded by enemies out to once again huimiliate China.

In the recent years, the two decades of demonization of Japan has taken a life of its own, and the government under Hu Jintao is now struggling to hold onto the reins of the golem it has summoned.
ponta

“So the Chinese government incites anti-Japanese demonstrations by quashing them?”

There is paradoxical nature in anti-Japan activism in China.

“While China’s ruling Communist Party partly encourages anti-Japanese sentiment to burnish its nationalist credentials, it remains obsessed with social stability and suspicious of any independent movement that could spin out of control and challenge its authority.”

( China blocks nationalist groups’ websites in apparent bid to forestall anti-Japanese protests
By Christopher Bodeen (September 17th, 2010 Canadian Press)
colorful

I don’t know about you guys but I’m really pumped at the prospects of Japan vs. China Round 2!

It’s about time that Japan stops acting out the pathetic pretense of a peace-loving WWII victim and show their true colors, return to the samurai warriors they once were.

It’s also about time that the Chinese government stop screwing their own and actually start kicking some foreign butt. They hid behind the KMT like cowards in the Sino-Japanese war, they’ve been diverting attention away from their own impotence by instigating hate among the brainwashed people, how about facing a real opponent fair and square?

Hope both sides stop this pointless verbal warfare over a insignificant piece of rock and sort things out with action.
Stereo

Colorful, everyone is a loser in a war.
Stereo

ij487i, it is well known that everything is censored in China, and that is why Google went out of the country. Do you think it would teach the true history for its children?

ponta

“Seems like the Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to ensure that these extreme protesters don’t go all out and maintain some semblance of decency..”

Not without reason.

“One of the few whispers of dissent came from a lone, slight man in a tan windbreaker who carried a sign reading “the government of Shen Zhen is corrupt.”

Luo Huanqiu didn’t care much about the dispute with Japan. He’s been pressing officials to better investigate the murder of his sister, he explained, and a planned protest seemed a handy time to raise his voice.

“I’m always looking for ways to air my grievance,” said Luo. “Today there are a lot of people. If you’re just one person, you get arrested. It’s safer in a big crowd.”
(Los Angeles Times September 18, 2010)

It is not unreasonable to assume that China does not want to turn anti-Japan activism to anti-regime activism.

“So much for the groundless claims of the Chinese government “actively inciting anti-Japanese demonstrations”

Interestingly, “when a Chinese cargo ship was fired on and sunk by a Russian cruiser” last year ” near Russia’s far-eastern port of Vladivostok and eight out of 16 crew members on board were saved while the others remain missing,” “China’s foreign spokeswoman Jiang Yu declined to comment on the Russians’ opening fire on the ship.”(Saturday, February 21, 2009 wikinews)

Chinese authority didn’t allow Chinese people to protest in front of Russian embassy.(2010.9.13 sankei)

“・・・・・ “anti-Japanese education” in their schools that the mass media in Japan loves to disseminate”

Do you mean anti-Japanese education like this?
中国の教科書と現状の痛いところをつっこむ　5-1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QSguBUm3OI

ij487i

Thanks for your response, Ponta, as expected.

“It is not unreasonable to assume that China does not want to turn anti-Japan activism to anti-regime activism.”

Precisely, how does that prove the government incites anti-Japanese demonstrations?

“Chinese authority didn’t allow Chinese people to protest in front of Russian embassy.(2010.9.13 sankei)”

Again, what does that prove? Did China censor online postings about the Russia incident as it did in response to anti-Japanese protests?

“Do you mean anti-Japanese education like this?”
中国の教科書と現状の痛いところをつっこむ　5-1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QSguBUm3OI

It’s this part that I have the most issue with, as you could not have chosen a more unreliable source as evidence. Did you even critically analyze the points in the video and try to find reliable third-party academic sources to confirm their claims? The Youtube user’s blog links to チャンネル桜 and FreeJapan (both ultranationalist organizations quite prominent in the current scene); and Yoshiko Sakurai, one of the panelists in the video, is a journalist infamous for her conservative revisionist/denialist interpretation of WWII and the issue of Japan’s war crimes. Ironic then that
she is leading a discussion on the so-called anti-Japanese tendencies of Chinese education, using the same brand of logic that “proved” the Japanese atrocities in China were a massive hoax.

Putting aside the shaky credibility of this video and its inherent bias, I could find no
tenable evidence in the clip of any maliciously “anti-Japanese” behavior on the part of the students or teacher. If you’re suggesting that the admission of Japanese atrocities in the classroom as cruel seems strange, then I would posit to you that any study of war or massacre would elicit a similar response from schoolchildren- whether it be Japanese children on a mandatory field trip to a Hiroshima exhibit, or schoolkids learning about the Holocaust. Naturally, my reaction was disgust for Hitler and the Nazis; does that mean my school is conspiring to teach students “anti-German” education?

People learn about events in schools, and form their own opinions on what they have learned. Nothing anti-[X country] about that. It doesn’t take government coercion to force students to realize that mass killing of civilians in wartime is morally wrong. Unless you can better define what makes learning about WWII atrocities in detail by nature anti-Japanese, I would be careful in making such an unsubstantiated claim.

As far as I can tell, the only thing the schoolteacher did wrong was to make the “disagreeable” (to Japanese) opinion that the actions of the Imperial Japanese Army during the war were cruel, based on historical events that actually took place. Strange concept, isn’t it?

ponta

ij487i
Thanks

“you could not have chosen a more unreliable source as evidence. ”

Do you say if CCP uploaded the video, it is reliable?

There is nothing unreliable about the translations of the Chinese textbook, no?

“, my reaction was disgust for Hitler and the Nazis; ”

Exactly, if the students learn about the massacre in Nanjing , in Tibet, in Hiroshima, etc, they would learn how cruel people could be. The massacres are disgusting wherever they took place by whomever they were committed.

If the students learn about the invasion to China by Japan, the invasion to Tibet by China , etc, they will learn the invasions are wrong.

But that does not seem to be what Chinese students are taught. It seems they are constantly taught they were all the victims but never aggressors.

Isn’t that why they constantly bring up historical issue against Japan but turn blind eye to the evil historical aspects of CCP?

That said, I don’t think average Chinese students are into history that much just as average Japanese students are not concerned about history.
I just hope China will quit using history for its political purpose and that Chinese people and Japanese people will get along.

helical

Update:

China suspends ministerial-level exchanges with Japan
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/china-suspends-ministerial-level-exchanges-with-japan/article1713589/

Basically the Chinese government is throwing a tantrum and isn’t talking to the Japanese government any more.
This is unrelated to economic ties, so regular trade is still continuing uninfluenced (at least not directly).
Aceface

“how does that prove the government incites anti-Japanese demonstrations?”

The fact that the demonstrations are possible indicate that.When was the last time you could see Tibetans marching the streets of Beijing for the freedom in Tibet?
ponta

中国杭州の日本人学校、れんが投げ込まれる　けが人なし

2010年9月20日12時59分　朝日

　【上海＝奥寺淳】中国浙江省杭州の日本人学校（児童・生徒３２人）で１９日午後９時４０分ごろ、正門の外側から学校の敷地内に向けてれんが５～６個が投げ込まれた。同校によると、自転車に２人乗りした若者６人がれんがを投げて逃げたのを警備員が目撃したという。けが人はなく、校舎の損壊もなかった。

　尖閣諸島沖で中国漁船と海上保安庁の巡視船が衝突した事件で、逮捕された中国人船長の勾留（こうりゅう）延長が認められた直後に発生したため、警察当局は関連を調べている。中国の日本人学校を巡っては、１２日にも天津で窓ガラスが割られる事件が起きるなど、一部に反日感情が高まっている。　

The bricks were thrown into Japanese school 　on Sept. 19th at Hangzhou.
The windows of Japanese school at Tianjin were broken on Sept. 12 th.

暴力反対！！！

Slowmo

this won’t get that much coverage on japanese news. i guarantee it.

Fred

I do not know much about the subject but this rally seems rather small for a country huge like china.
potkettle

Usual BS. The fisherman was probably under orders to test the waters (pun intended), to see how the J gOv. would react. C gov. has plausible deniability, all to gain nothing to lose. The fisherman would become a hero one way or the other, if J gov. backs down there will be more than one boat in the area!

Anti-Japanese Protests Held in China

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