protest - China's nationalistic revolution


Symbolic presence

“Japanese pigs” and “Japanese out” were just few of the less flattering slogans the close to 30,000 demonstrators shouted last Saturday at the Japanese consulate in Shanghai – the largest anti-Japanese gathering in China of the past few weeks.

People are “dissatisfied with Japan's attitudes and action on a series of issues such as its history of aggression,'' municipal spokeswoman Jiao Yang said in remarks reported today on Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government's official voice on political issues, according to Bloomberg.

The situation is a bit more complicated than that, not only for the relations between China and Japan, but also for the rather tricky relationship between the different sections of the Chinese government and the anti-Japanese demonstrators.
Yesterday brought together a broad spectrum of China’s population, university students, white collar workers, migrant workers and visitors from outside the city. Also a smaller group of scholars and journalists from Japan added their bit of flavor to the ongoing discussions on what is really going on, what does the rhetoric of different players mean.
A few of the demonstrators came to me to explain that their anger only focused on the small group of Japanese rightwing extremists. “We have nothing against the Japanese in general, they are our friends.”
That now might be a subtlety that has been lost for most of the Japanese, as well as for the majority of the demonstrators. The rather verbal racist attacks on the Japanese might not do down very well at the Japanese networks and a first exodus of Japanese family members might be well on its way later this week. Japanese tourists will decide to skip China and when rioting continues, business might use that as a reason to avoid China.
Some demonstrators suggested China’s economy could easily do without Japan; I would see major trouble ahead when the second economy in the world would pull out, even when it is only a partial withdrawal.
Anti-Japanese feelings have been around for decades and have offered a rather volatile climate as long as I know China. But the events of the past few weeks show a change in intensity, scale and aggressiveness that might work as a watershed.
The announced boycott of Japanese goods for May, might hurt China economically more than it hurts Japan, as most Japanese products are made in China anyway. Maybe Chinese want to put up with those self-inflicted wounds, but managers and workers at those Japanese companies might disagree. As a signal it is a troublesome one.
The effects might not be limited to Japanese business only. Also the US diplomatic missions have been warning their citizens for possible fallout for the American citizens. Some of the Americans I met yesterday were rather reluctant to identify themselves as American for that same reason.

A destroyed restaurant.

Close to 2,000 uniformed police officers and other military forces, apart from a huge number of plainclothes officials, watched scenes that increasingly became more violent during the more than half a day of demonstrations in the Hongqiao area. What started as throwing eggs and plastic bottles, evolved into the demolition of shops as individual demonstrators saw that nobody was going to stop them anyway. While the consulate was pretty well protected, it was no comparison to the demonstrations against the American consulate in 1999 after NATO destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Then only students with ID’s were allowed into the area in small batches to vent their anger. Yesterday everybody could get to the consulate and the police mostly watched when violence started to spread out in the area.
Police seemed to have one major assignment: not to incite the feelings of the demonstrators. For very good reasons, since the demonstrators felt they were not supported by their government in what they perceived as patriotic acts. In the past few days before the demonstration, the Shanghai government tried to convince people not to join, signaling to Japan and demonstrators alike it did not support the actions. That signal was well noted by the demonstrators. Police actions against the demonstrators could have very fast turned against the law enforcement agencies too. Apart from a few noted arrests, mostly there was no reaction as demonstrators took out shop after shop.
Police officers were seemed also not equipped for any possible massive clashes with the demonstrators.
Violence was not limited to the Hongqiao area, but reports suggested that also in other parts of Shanghai shops were demolished. Those were mostly Chinese owned-shops with Japanese signs on it, some even with faulty Romanization of the Japanese characters, but that again might have been a subtlety that might be lost for a Japanese audience.

The Chinese authorities have maneuvered themselves in a situation where they almost cannot do anything else apart from going along with the anti-Japanese mood, unless they want to run the chance to be taken on by the protestors themselves. The non-governmental organization behind the demonstrations has won in strength, by organizing themselves over the internet and collecting funds from both individuals and companies.
Most likely Chinese authorities will try behind the scenes try to move against this organization, but in a more open society, connected through the internet, and on such a hot issue that might offer great challenges.
“The main problem is that both the Chinese and Japanese ministries of foreign affairs are notoriously bad in communicating,” says James Farrer, China-scholar at the Sophia University in Tokyo. “The Japanese think they have been apologizing to China all the time, but have been unable to get that message across. The Chinese have not been very eager to pick up that signal too.”
Farrer sees one possibility to solve the current deadlock. “Only the Japanese emperor can make a gesture that could not be missed by the Chinese,” he says. “He should come to China and apologize. But that seems rather unlikely since the rightwing forces in Japan keep the imperial family almost as their hostages.”

More reports: AP, Danwei, Kyodo, more AP, Shanghai Diaries, Philippe Roy, Chris Myrick (2x), who kindly provided some pictures.

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