Posted on 12/30/2004 7:34:53 AM PST by areafiftyone
Anti-Japanese fury is rising among internet users - a trend the state is keen to encourage
At 27 years old, Song Yangbiao is already earning a salary that his parents can only have dreamed of. He is better educated, more widely travelled and can expect to live a longer, healthier, wealthier life than any generation in Chinese history. You might think he is also more content. You would be wrong. Mr Song is not happy. He is furious.
So furious that he spends more than five hours every day venting his frustrations on the internet, where he has set up a site for tens of thousands of like-minded young Chinese people to air their grievances. So vitriolic and widespread are their web-based protests that the domestic media have labelled the affluent, academic and internet-savvy generation that they represent as the "angry young".
Like their namesakes in Britain in the 1950s, China's angry young men and women are the products of a fast-changing society in which rising expectations for the future contrast starkly with frustrations about the past and present. In private, their anger is amorphous, multi-faceted and idealistic. But in public, which usually means internet bulletin boards, their scope to let off steam is largely limited to nationalism. The explosive growth of the web in China, where the number of users is growing by more than 25% a year, is often cited by advocates of political reform as a source of hope for greater openness in the world's last big communist state.
But there is increasing evidence that the opposite may be true. Sites advocating democracy, religious freedom or union rights are closed down by the authorities and their operators often arrested. But there are countless sites like Mr Song's devoted to one of the few political passions permitted by the government: hatred for Japan.
Every day on the "My View of Japan" bulletin board, Mr Song and his contributors post reports of perceived slights by their neighbours, who are referred to at least once as "shitty little Japanese". Many predict that military conflict is inevitable, and some wish it would come sooner rather than later. "I'm 30 and a fire burns in my heart," writes one contributor. "Only war can extinguish these flames."
While hate-mongering is a feature of extremist internet chatrooms around the world, in China such inflammatory comments appear to represent anything but a small minority. In the past two years, small anti-Japanese protests have mushroomed into nationwide campaigns through the internet and mobile phone text messages.
Mr Song believes anger is natural, given what he sees as Japan's failure to properly atone for atrocities carried out by its troops during their occupation of China. "It is not the elderly who hate Japan, but those who were born in the 70s and 80s. We have grown up in a fast-developing country, but even though our country gets stronger and stronger, we have not been able to shed the humiliations of history and the fact that our persecutor has never admitted his crimes," says the bespectacled journalist. "The killers who slaughtered our people have escaped punishment and now live comfortably. Even if the government can accept that, we cannot."
Such views are common among China's young, and they are increasingly evident at a government level. Economically, ties have never been better. Japan is China's largest business partner, with bilateral trade rising by more than 30% in 2003 to a record 130bn yen (£650m). But political relations between Asia's two most powerful nations are at their lowest point for decades.
China's leaders have refused regular summit meetings with Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, since 2001, when he began annual visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine to Japan's fallen soldiers, including war criminals.
"What we have now is a relationship that is economically warm and politically cold," said Professor Zhou Yongsheng from China Foreign Affairs University. "It is abnormal that the leaders of two such important nations have not met each other for three years other than on the sidelines of international conferences."
Compromise
The deterioration of relations is largely the result of one of the world's biggest diplomatic fudges. Japan's postwar restoration of diplomatic relations with its neighbours was based on top-level compromise rather than grassroots penitence. Instead of paying compensation - which would imply guilt - the government offered trillions of yen in economic aid.
This satisfied government leaders in Beijing, who used the money for dams, bridges and other prestige projects, but the Chinese public has been left largely unaware that their nation's economic growth has been partly bankrolled by Tokyo. Despite 3 trillion yen (£15bn) in grants and cheap loans over the past 25 years, few know that Xian, Xianyang and Guangzhou airports, as well as numerous other giant infrastructure projects, were built with Japanese money.
Mr Koizumi hinted last month that aid to China - which has been steadily cut over the past four years - could soon come to an end. The Japanese military named China as a threat for the first time in its latest defence white paper.
Hisahiko Okazaki, a Japanese security analyst, said China had "artificially rekindled" public hostility towards Tokyo. "The government sponsored a patriotic movement and the main target was Japan. Events had faded from people's memories, but the government revived them and made it into a national movement."
Chinese nationalist groups say it has become easier to operate since president Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao came to power last year. "The new leadership have a stronger feeling of nationalism than their predecessors. So we have more space to carry out our activities," said Tong Zeng, founder of a group campaigning to reclaim a disputed island chain in the East China Sea, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
In the past, government restrictions on anti-Japanese activity forced Mr Tong and his group to travel to Hong Kong to hire a boat to land on the islands, but now, he said, they can openly hire a boat on the mainland. Protests outside the Japanese embassy in Beijing used to be quickly broken up by police, but this year at least 10 have been permitted. Local media coverage has increased.
This partly reflects an easing of restrictions in many areas of Chinese public life. But many observers believe the Communist party is channelling public frustration into anti-Japanese xenophobia. "The ideological rationale of the Communist party has collapsed. This is one of the most divided and least egalitarian nations on earth," said a Beijing-based diplomat. "So the Communist party's legitimacy is now more dependent on its historical opposition to Japan."
With historical differences still far from solved and the two rivals increasingly competing for energy resources and political leadership in Asia, Mr Song predicts the nationalist passions of China's "angry youth" will grow.
"I think our hatred towards Japan is the inevitable consequence of growing Chinese power and democratisation," he said. "It is time that the world heard the voice of the Chinese public as well as the Chinese government. The two are not the same. You might even say they are disharmonious."
Wait until he finds put what the communists did to China...
True. This guy needs a history lesson. And a good dose of reality!
Bah, the same could be said about our own youth and our own country. What is the average age of the DU poster, I wonder. At least the Chinese kids hate another country intead of their own.
It is time to help and encourage Japan to rearm right now.
Japan is they only country in that region that can possibly hope to slow down the Chinese both militarily and economically. If we are behind them, World War 3, when it happens and it will eventually happen, will have the new Samurai on our side....
Yep. The rape of Nanking was an awful event...the Japanese Imperial Army killed how many? 300-thousand people? Many of them women and children? Good God.
I wonder how long it'll take this new generation of Chinese kids to put that horror behind them...if they can?
Since online "dungeons and dragons" type multiplayer gaming is uber-hot in this part of Asia...wonder how this nationalism plays out in that internet genre...?
It is Time to let Japan go Nuclear - We will see the hatred than!!!!
I am no expert on Asian history, but it seems to me that the history of Chinese domination of Japan is non-existent, while the history of Japanese domination of China is long.
I would not mess with the Japanese, if I were them.
Japan seems to be going through a process now of wishing to reassert itself as an international power in its own right, so now is an especially bad time for China to start making any threatening noises.
Actually, the killers are almost all dead now and you are correct in your assessment of his indoctrination. The truth about their own history will never be taught them.
Do you think for one minute that the regime is going to tell the kids that MAO and his ilk murdered more than 20MIL of their own people.
There's no contesting the sheer destruction and depravity of Japanese war crimes before and during World War II. And what's worse is the Japanese refusal to acknowledge those war crimes (while at the same time pitching a fit about our dropping two a-bombs on them).
...but Japan's war crimes against China pale in comparison to the atrocities carried out by the Communist Chinese against the rest of China's people. That cannot be denied. And that's why the ChiComs are eager to foment hatred of the Japanese; it keeps the rising anger directed away from their own deserving necks.
In terms of reactors? Sure. In terms of weaponry? Love to see proof.
Love may make the world go round, but hate greases the wheels.
I guess he never heard of Mao.
The difference is, their government is worth of hatred.
" Japan would nuke China in to the 16th century."
Japan doesn't have any nukes.
That is what I was thinking Tiananmen Square ring a bell with him. The only oppressor against his generation is his own government. Why not take some of that angry and kick the current regime out.
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