Predictably, the demonstrations in China are making the situation worse, creating a tug of war and ratcheting up Japanese nationalism and militancy.
Japanese politicians, however, have dismissed the complaints of China and South Korea, saying they are trying to exploit the past to keep Japan from claiming its rightful place in the world. Shinzo Abe, the acting secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, said Sunday that anger at social problems in China, including widening income gaps, was really behind the weekend marches.
“Japan is an outlet to vent that anger,” Mr. Abe said in an appearance on the “Sunday Project” television program.
“Since the Tiananmen incident, these kinds of demonstrations were severely restricted, but the authorities tolerated these kinds of anti-Japanese gatherings, and the people themselves used these anti-Japanese marches,” he said. “Because of the anti-Japanese education there, it’s easy to light the fire of these demonstrations and, because of the Internet, it’s easy to assemble a lot of people.”
China’s and South Korea’s complaints have only strengthened the hands of conservative politicians like Mr. Abe or Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, who take an unapologetic stance toward Japan’s neighbors.
Under Mr. Ishihara, whose views were regarded as extremist only a few years ago but are now mainstream, the Tokyo metropolitan government has for the second year punished teachers who refused to stand and sing “Kimigayo,” the national anthem, a symbol of militarism to many inside and outside the country, or refused to force their students to do so. During this spring’s graduation ceremonies, 53 such teachers were punished.
The article notes the rallies in China have resulted in a steep and rapid deteriotation of relations between the two countries. I realize the textbooks that started this whole mess were flawed and inexcusable and I also realize they were a mere catalyst, a spark that ignited the tinderbox. But was it really worth it, releasing those pent-up hatreds and feeling good for a few minutes by throwing things, when there’s so much at stake? (Like China’s global reputation, trade with Japan, perceptions of Chinese belligerence, etc.)
I read on a Chinese message board today how the demonstrations show China’s might, and proves they aren’t “a country to mess with.” I’m not sure if the sight of a few thousand teenagers throwing eggs truly conveyed that message to the world. It did, however, send a message about the people’s insecurity and lack of self-control, which I doubt will provide much long-term benefit.
1
By Ivan
I’m an American teacher in China, and today I spoke to my students in Beijing about this, and I recited to them, the words of Dr Martin Luther King, in his “I have a Dream” speech:
“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degnerate into physical violence.”
And in fairness to my excellent students in Beijing, they all clapped, they all applauded when I shared those words of our American hero, Dr King.
This is what the true heart of China is like, after all. The best of the Chinese agree with Dr Martin Luther King.
April 11, 2005 @ 8:33 am | Comment
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By richard
Ivan, it it absolutely wonderful to hear that. The Chinese people I knew, too, were caring and considerate and open-minded. So what a shame, with so many magnificent people in China, that the world now sees this small group of angry, sloganeering Red Guard-types as representative of the country.
April 11, 2005 @ 8:41 am | Comment
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By jr
very wonderful indeed. I see a very good teacher. gotta go
April 11, 2005 @ 9:02 am | Comment
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By Gordon
http://messages.yahoo.co.jp/bbs?.mm=NW&action=m&board=552019566&tid=cf9q&sid=552019566&mid=28253
April 11, 2005 @ 10:21 am | Comment
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By lisa
really interesting article by Chalmers Johnston about the whole China/Japan/US triangle…
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0315-24.htm
April 11, 2005 @ 10:58 am | Comment
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By richard
My God, what a grim article — great, brilliant, insightful, but grim, for the US, at least. Less grim for China. Thanks for sharing that, Lisa.
April 11, 2005 @ 11:11 am | Comment
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By lisa
My pleasure …er, sort of…well, you know what I mean.
It’s just another reason we have got to get rid of the neo-Con cabal ruining this country…
April 11, 2005 @ 11:35 am | Comment
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By Henry X
I normally keep my opionions to my self but couldn’t help this time.
Are you people out of your mind to applaud such an article? All human kind has the US to thank for not co-existing with Germany, Japan or Russia peacefully. I am not an American – I spent most of my life in China. Maybe that is why I can appreciate what the US has done much more than you people do.
I don’t know much about the neo-Cons, but when I got my right to vote, I will make sure the clowns from the “progressive community” don’t ruin this country.
April 11, 2005 @ 6:59 pm | Comment
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By richard
Thanks for sharing, Henry. This country is founded on progressive thinking and it had worked relatively well up until this administration, when the country went to hell in a handbasket. If you want to embrace them it’s your choice. Just make sure you’re doing it based on the administrations actual achievements (of which I can think of precious few) and not Karl Rove’s sloganeering/smearing.
April 11, 2005 @ 7:39 pm | Comment
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By lirelou
Richard, the United States was also founded upon the idea of “enlightened self interest”. As regards the article, while I would wholeheartedly agree that the U.S. should have never become involved in Vietnam beyond the possible provision of military advisors to the ARVN government (for our own perceived interests at the time, not for altruism), I would hardly label the Lao Dong Party’s struggle as one of “national liberation”. To liberate is to free. To place a yoke on someone’s shoulders is to subjugate. Most of those I know who describe themselves as progressive find Fidel Castro, Che Guevara Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zhedong, just to name a few, as figures worthy of emulation.
April 11, 2005 @ 8:33 pm | Comment
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By JR
It’s frightening, a lot of Chinese Americans are voting for Republicans, including Tom delay in Sugar land Texas.
April 11, 2005 @ 11:46 pm | Comment
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By Filthy Stinking No.9
It’s not frightening JR … it’s a damned good thing. The new immigrants know a good thing when they see it. My usual reaction when I sit around a table with a bunch of “progressive and enlightened” people is a) keep my mouth shut, because they are usually completely intolerent of opposing views, as I know from bitter experience, and b) while I sit there listening to them, I smile to myself and think “it’s only because there are people like me in power, that you have the luxury to sit there and be like that.” I’m with Henry, because the right is right … and the left isn’t.
April 12, 2005 @ 1:18 am | Comment
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By Lisa
Oh for god’s sake. If you people think that what the neocons are doing is good for America and for the rest of the world, then you obviously are not paying very close attention. Please do share if you have some cogent arguments otherwise, because I really don’t get it, and I’m not an ideologue in the slightest. I’d like to know why you feel the way you do. I certainly know why I feel the way I do! Look at Richard’s posts about the theocrats attempting to destroy an independent judiciary as just one example.
April 12, 2005 @ 2:13 am | Comment
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By Henry X
If Chalmers Johnson is representative of the progressives, then you shouldn’t be surprised I felt the way I did. America should “adjust peacefully” while the Japanese slaughtered the Chinese and the Germans slaughtered the Jews, do you people seriously believe that? Besides this ridiculous assertion, the article is full of holes and self-contradiction. The author seems to imply that the current Japan is more dangerous than the Japan sixty some years ago. Is there any logic behind that? At one point he blamed America for not giving the Japanese sovereign rights after the war and in the end blamed America again for returning that right now. It seems America is to be blamed for everything.
April 12, 2005 @ 1:29 pm | Comment
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By richard
FSN: My usual reaction when I sit around a table with a bunch of “progressive and enlightened” people is a) keep my mouth shut, because they are usually completely intolerent of opposing views, as I know from bitter experience, and b) while I sit there listening to them, I smile to myself and think “it’s only because there are people like me in power, that you have the luxury to sit there and be like that.” I’m with Henry, because the right is right … and the left isn’t.
FSN, surely you know better. America was founded on liberal, progressive thinking directly inspired by the likes of Hume and Locke and Diderot and Voltaire. It is only this progessiveness that has made America great and prosperous. And it is only now, under the farthest-right government we have ever had, that we see things deteriorating with astounding rapidity: It was just reported that there is now NEGATIVE growth in wages, which is utterly unprecedented. “We are in debt as never before. People are terrified about losing their shitty little jobs because business is contracting. Everything across the board is worse for everyone except the super-rich. And have ou heard about Tom Delay, and the theocracy that’s gaining so much power and air time? Tell me honestly, are you really happier with these people in power – Santorum, Delay, Coburn, Frist? Do you think it’s good some advocate a weakening of the judiciary when the judges vote against them. And the corruption – have you read about it? Are these really people to emulate and admire? They have failed in everything, from protecting us from terrorism to improving the economy. They have no single achievement to boast of, except amorphous and unprovable claims, like the war in Iraq is what caused Lebanon to move toward freedom. That is highly arguable, but it’s the only kind of claim they can make, as American under Bush has become a bleeding basket case. Our to-the-right leaders exist for one purpose and one purpose alone: to be the lackeys for the super-rich. They answer to no one else, and wrap themselves in claims of piety and religion while they fleece tyhe working man of all the things that once made us a great nation, the envy of the world. .
April 12, 2005 @ 2:07 pm | Comment
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By lisa
Henry, I am assuming the following paragraph is what you are reacting to in the Chalmers Johnson article:
Let me make clear that in East Asia we are not talking about a little regime-change war of the sort that Bush and Cheney advocate. After all, the most salient characteristic of international relations during the last century was the inability of the rich, established powers — Great Britain and the United States — to adjust peacefully to the emergence of new centers of power in Germany, Japan, and Russia. The result was two exceedingly bloody world wars, a forty-five-year-long Cold War between Russia and the “West,” and innumerable wars of national liberation (such as the quarter-century long one in Vietnam) against the arrogance and racism of European, American, and Japanese imperialism and colonialism.
I pretty much missed it when I first saw the article (I thought his analysis that followed of the present situation was really interesting and worthwhile) and I could see why you would react negatively to it. I am only somewhat familiar with Chalmers, but I am going to assume that he is talking in great part about the lead up to the first World War and the terms of Germany’s surrender, which impovershed Germany and created the conditions which led to Hitler’s rise. I’m not familiar enough with Japanese history to outline the argument but I know there are some parallel arguments that Japan was hemmed in by the west economically, which again encouraged militaristic elements, etc. (though later in the article, Johnson goes on to say “Japan refuses to atone for or even acknowledge its historical war crimes. Quite the opposite, it continues to rewrite history, portraying itself as the liberator of Asia and a victim of European and American imperialism”). Maybe Mark Anthony Jones can help us out with this one! But all that aside, I completely agree with you that aggressive, racist regimes that practice genocide cannot be tolerated. That particular paragraph was so overly general and ill-defined that I couldn’t tell you what exactly Johnson means by it, and it’s easy to interpret it as being offensive.
The article as a whole, however, I think is very valuable. The United States is inserting itself in East Asia in a way that I think is potentially very dangerous.
April 12, 2005 @ 2:49 pm | Comment
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By Sam_S
Richard and Lisa;
There was a time, don’t forget, when “Liberal and progressive” values included opposition to fascist dictatorships and support for national liberations.
If the only reason for abandoning those values now is that they are also championed by a knuckle-dragging cowboy who’s not in your party, wouldn’t that be cause for deep shame?
I really hope that at least a few of “liberal and progressive” folk are re-thinking their emotional opposition to the purple-finger revolution.
“amorphous and unprovable” ? What, was Lebanon inspired by Arafat? Chirac? The “Arab Spring” has been inspired by one thing more than anything else, and I think it would be much more productive to just accept that and move on to other more legitimate reasons to rage against the Monkey Man.
April 12, 2005 @ 7:25 pm | Comment
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By richard
Sam, that’s an easy one – Lebanon was inspired by the murder of Hariri. But the situation there isn’t nearly as black and white as the Republicans would have you believe; they have made it so simplistic — Lebanon saw the wonders of iraq’s democracy and decided they wanted to follow suit. The situation is way more complex (a large portion of the Lebanese don’t even want Syria to leave) and again, hariri was the catalyst. The new democracy of iraq and maybe Lebanon is far too new and tenuous and fragile to bank on. I was happy to see the elections, but appalled at their delay and all the carnage that the delay brought about. But anyway…
I am in favor of national liberation and opposing dictators, though not of unilateral initiatives anytime we decide it warranted despite poor evidence. There’s Sudan and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and North Korea and many other places ruled by brutal dictators. I tried to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iraq, as I always believed in Saddam’s ouster. But I was dismayed by the extent of the government’s synchronized lies and shameless bungling of the mission. And then there was the ensuing money grab by the contractors and lobbyists (nearly all freinds of Bush and Cheney), a heartbreaking orgy of barbarians at the gate, waiting to suck the Treasury dry. Bush earned my contempt. He won it one day at a time. It’s not just because he’s in a party I dislike, I never, ever had such feelings about Bush I or Ronald Reagan. No, W. worked hard to gain my utter loathing, and it increases as he stands up for bloodsucking scumbags like Tom Delay and for tampering in families’ personal affairs, in a spirit that is the exact oppostite of true conservatism. But you know where I stand on this topic, Sam. I respect your opinion, but we won’t win one another over to our respective sides.
April 12, 2005 @ 7:45 pm | Comment
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By lisa
A little late for me to chime in here, but…YEAH! What Richard said. I’d add to it but I think this thread is dead, Jim…
April 13, 2005 @ 6:28 pm | Comment
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By bellevue
Henry:
While I share much of the emotion with you, I’d like to get the record straight. A progressive community is not made up with a few ‘useful idiots’ frequented here and littered with their lies whitewashing every crime China has made against its own people – well, not entirely. Like I love to remind others, progressives or liberals are at one of their best moments when Nancy Pelosi protested in Tiananmen square for the silented and murdered Chinese, and genocided Tibetans, among many other occasions. That’s what this country is all about, and what liberalism is all about.
April 14, 2005 @ 5:30 am | Comment