China’s continued bottom line message to Japan’s request that it apologize for violent anti-Japanese demonstrations is: “Don’t hold your breath.”
And after a third weekend of furious demonstration in China, efforts later today to try to put a lid on the bubbling-over anger could be challenging, indeed, if some reports from weblogs in China are any indication.
A sign of how rotten relations are becoming can be seen in this summary by Reuters:
Japan and China were headed into talks in Beijing Monday aimed at halting a free-fall in ties after a third weekend of protest in China against what many see as Japan’s inability to face up to its wartime past.
But little headway is expected following the violent protests which along with disputes over territory, a Japanese textbook and Tokyo’s bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat have dragged relations to their lowest point in decades.
There are various reasons behind this, including historical (see more on that below). But the two immediate issues at hand are:
- Japan is absolutely insisting on some kind of an apology.
- China is making it clear none is coming and suggesting it can’t help the spontaneous outpouring of rage from its populace that just happens to be happening right now.
But, in fact, the China-based blog Running Dog suggests that if China is not exactly looking the other way then it’s seemingly standing with one hand out as if to say “halt” and the other hand held below it motioning the demonstrators to keep coming. Read the post in full but here are some excerpts:
The status of the marches has remained ambiguous. While not quite approved by the authorities, they were certainly condoned. The official boundaries and circumscriptions were provided by roadblocks and temporary PA systems urging calm, but the public security bureau soon discovered that the waves of mob euphoria were almost impossible to contain.
The police looked on as a group of hooligans threw a bicycle into the window of a teppanyaki restaurant. They did nothing when the group then proceeded to take turns to throw rocks at the restaurant’s remaining windows. The riot police guarding the Consulate looked worried when the mindless physicality of the crowd suddenly tried to press forward and breach their defence. Holding their positions, they could do nothing when some members of the crowd began aiming stones at the roof of the buildings.
Other observers say that as many as three Japanese people were severely beaten by a group of demonstrators, and that a foreigner in the crowd was threatened after taking photographs of the events using a Japanese camera.
Remember: this is in China, a country not exactly tarred with a reputation of being the home of uncontrolled, sustained anarchy over the past few decades. Running Dog is blunt about what’s happening:
The kindest interpretation of these events is that Japan, and anti-Japanese sentiments, were actually a pretext, a figleaf concealing decades of accumulated rage and frustration. Protestors took advantage of a chink in the ideological restrictions of the government, and by singing the national anthem and calling for the return of the Senkaku Islands to Chinese sovereignty, they sought to position themselves as impeccable, irreproachable patriots. Beyond the flag-waving, the marchers were by no means pro-government. Rather, it seems that the government – well aware of the extent of the anger – thought it best to keep them on its side.
That is not to say that the anti-Japanese sentiments were not real. The hatred, of course, runs deep. Euphoric and ecstatic, thousands of students poured down Shanghai’s biggest streets and past its most significant commercial centres, chanting about ‘Japanese pigs’, ‘stinking Japanese’, ‘small Japanese’, chanting ‘kill kill kill’ and beaming beatifically as their plastic bottles, eggs and tomatos rained down on the many Japanese retail outlets on their route.
This, then, perhaps explains the stance that Kyodo News says Japan’s Prime Minister is expected to take today:
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to demand that China apologize and provide compensation for the recent vandalism of Japanese properties in China during recent anti-Japanese protests at an upcoming meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Monday.
“There is no change in our basic policy,” Hosoda, the Japanese government’s top spokesman, told a press conference after Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing refused to offer an apology and compensation when he met with his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, in Beijing on Sunday. At the meeting in Beijing, the two foreign ministers agreed to work to prepare talks between Koizumi and Hu on the sidelines of an Asia-Africa summit to start later this week in Indonesia
In a piece in the Guardian that should be read in full, Isabelle Hinton notes that these events are happening because of major geopolitical shifts:
If the resentment is now back on the streets, it is because China’s rise is shifting the geopolitical tectonic plates, offering a direct challenge to Japan’s economic dominance of east Asia and to the strategic dominance the US has enjoyed, with its major ally Japan, since 1945. In the East China Sea, China and Japan have been facing each other off over fossil fuel reserves in 36,000km2 square miles of disputed waters. China has been drilling for gas in an area that Japan claims, and this week Japan announced to Chinese protests that it would license oil and gas drilling in the same waters.
Then there is the military dimension: the rapid modernisation of China’s armed forces means that the long-standing judgment that China could not mount a successful invasion of Taiwan is no longer a reliable guide to the future. The US is bound by treaty to defend Taiwan and could once rely on the moral support of the region. But as the US loses influence, Japan is increasingly exposed as its most reliable military ally — one that the US is encouraging to develop a more robust military profile.
Hinton also points to the U.S. preoccupation of Iraq for having ripple effect in Asia:
While the Bush administration has been preoccupied with Iraq, China has been steadily expanding its clout in Asia. In Australia, South Korea and Thailand it is the dominant economic and strategic partner, and is securing its own trading relationships by building networks in which it will be central….
Meanwhile, U.S. former deputy assistant secretary of defense, Peter Brooks, in an extensive piece on Town Hall, warns “as political relations with Japan deteriorate, China is likely to accelerate its military buildup, especially its ocean-going navy. This would further ratchet up tensions with Taiwan and Japan – and the U.S., which has defense commitments to both Taipei and Tokyo.”
He writes that “China’s belligerence may well force Tokyo and Taipei into each other’s embrace, forming a “virtual alliance” against Beijing. This won’t settle well with China at all, which considers Taiwan a “renegade province.” His advice: the U.S. needs to talk to China and underscore that it stands behind its Japanese ally.
UPDATE: Here is a chronology of relations between the two countries.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.