As China’s image continues to be blemished by reports in the foreign media of sometimes-violent riots against the Japanese, facilitated by government officials, the CCP has decided it’s time to call it quits for now.

China’s foreign minister called Tuesday for an end to anti-Japanese protests, the first signal that the leadership may no longer welcome the sometimes violent demonstrations that have underpinned a new and more confrontational approach to Japan.

The minister, Li Zhaoxing, told a meeting of the Communist Party’s propaganda department attended by 3,500 people that government, military and party officials, as well as “the masses,” should stay off the streets, state media reported.

“Cadres and the masses must believe in the party and the government’s ability to properly handle all issues linked to Sino-Japanese relations,” Mr. Li was quoted as saying. “Calmly, rationally and legally express your own views. Do not attend marches that have not been approved. Do not do anything that might upset social stability.”

But his appeal to rein in the protests most likely reflects the views of top leaders, who may have concluded that little is to be gained from further protests and that social stability is at some risk if they continue unchecked…..

The big test of the order will come next week. Urban residents have been sending text and e-mail messages to one another calling for major marches on May 1, China’s traditional Labor Day, and on May 4.

I think this is a smart move. No, I don’t think the people should be prevented from demonstrating. But it signals that the government has wised up to just how damaging this episode has been to China in terms of trade and reputation. If it means they’ll no longer be giving the demonstrators rides to rallies and supplying them with eggs and rocks to throw, it’s a good thing.

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens the first week in May. My hope is that today’s announcement will take some air out of the balloon so China can focus more on things that really matter.

You will want to take a look at this collection of links to all things China-related. It’s put together by Joe Katzman, an exceptionally bright writer, though definitely of the conservative school. Here’s part of his preface:

This post will not be about convincing you of one specific view of China’s future. That’s partly because I don’t have one. Instead, I’d rather introduce you to some new ideas about what that future could look like, and leave you better informed about some of the dynamics by laying out some good thought-pieces and good sources. Then you can get informed, think it over, come to your own conclusions, and hopefully return to discuss it.

There’s a lot there, and I’ve barely even started going through it. There are also some very smart comments.

There’s an exquisite post by Digby on why it’s no laughing matter that Time magazine is featuring Ann Coulter as its covergirl this week. Further proof of extremist right-wing thinking seeping precipitously into the mainstream.

Seeing Ann Coulter feted on the cover of Time magazine as a mainstream political figure instead of the deranged, murderous extremist she actually is was quite a shock. And then a friend sent me the links to the Free Republic thread discussing the death of Marla Ruzicka, which made me so nauseous that I had to shut down for a while.

It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn’t. For instance, he doesn’t say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn’t say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn’t say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn’t put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn’t, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it’s a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.

I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions. Slowly, slowly the water is heating up.

Yes, she’s a media whore and we all know she’s lying and that she knows she’s lying. But Ann Coulter has a huge audience, her books become bestsellers, and the major media treat her not only with kid gloves but with an esteem she doesn’t deserve (what an understatement). Her bizarre comments advocating killing liberals are minimized as “jokes,” and for reasons totally inexplicable to me, her incredibly blatant lies are glossed over. Like, it’s okay becuase she’s a right-wing conservative pundit and they’re supposed to be controversial and no one expects them to tell the truth.

And now, that evil left-wing MSM is holding her up on the highest altar and giving her credibility. Talk about treason…

Don’t miss the complete Digby post. It’s a classic.

Due to a number of reasons, I am removing this post and its comments, which take this blog in a direction I’d rather avoid. Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks to Stephen Frost at CSR Asia, I found this devastating visual account of the achingly hard life of China’s coal miners.

Reports on miners’ deaths are so common in China one scarcely gives them any thought. These photographs remind us that each of those statistics is a human being, a brother, a father, a son. Stephen also offers an English translation of the Chinese text.

One of the interesting phenomena of today’s political scene in America is the willingness, even gleeful enthusiasm, that many on the right display when saying things that just a few years would have been considered unacceptable. We saw some good hints of it after the Iraq war, when the lobbyists began sending out flyers that said in as many words that they were friends with such-and-such and if you paid them enough they’d get you in front of their powerful friend. This used to be something done with a degree of tact and delicacy, but today there’s no need for such niceties. In this new conservative era you can just shout it out and be proud; no reason to hide behind formalities. Subtlety is for girlie-men.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I read about Ted Nugent’s speech to the NRA. Depressed, nauseated, angry, but not at all surprised.

With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be “hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense.”

Speaking at the NRA’s annual convention Saturday, Nugent said each NRA member should try to enroll 10 new members over the next year and associate only with other members.

“Let’s next year sit here and say, ‘Holy smokes, the NRA has 40 million members now,'” he said. “No one is allowed at our barbecues unless they are an NRA member. Do that in your life.”

Nugent sang and played a guitar painted with red and white stripes for the crowd at Houston’s downtown convention center.

He drew the most cheers when he told gun owners they should never give up their right to bear arms and should use their guns to protect themselves if needed.

“Remember the Alamo! Shoot ’em!” he screamed to applause. “To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ’em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot ’em.”

So is this new forthrightness a good thing, a sign of greater honesty? I don’t think so. Part of belonging to a civilized society is a commitment to containing and controlling our most base emotions and behaving with dignity and politeness and respect. Now, these may be seen as “artifice” and mere formality that we macho men are better off discarding, but such artifice plays an important role in keeping civilized people civil. First we drop them from our language, then it influences our behavior, and then…. Well, read about what happens to societies that embrace violence as part of their party line, even if it’s violence “in the name of peace.”

I read things like this and wonder how we’ve slipped so far backwards so quickly. Language that a few years ago would have been damned universally is so routine no one flinches. Can we ever get our dignity back and become decent again?

Do not miss this great post on the anti-Japanese protests on one of the smaretst blogs in China (though it’s not really a blog). Sample:

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….

It was politics at its most terrifying – politics as mass mobilization, and politics reduced to the undifferentiated prejudices of the crowd. The government should be very worried about such violent potential. Outside the cities, the masses are rioting about less abstract concerns. They riot about poverty and injustice, about corruption and pollution. Outside the cities, these huge pressures are far more troubling to the authorities.

Definitely read it all. Lisa, thanks for the link – I thought they’d shut down, so I haven’t been going there lately.

Last week, several blogs, especially those to the right, seized on a fascinating story of a bloody riot in the Chinese village of Huankantou as evidence of China’s being on the brink of internal collapse. The language was dire, and it wasn’t only the warblogger types who were making the claims. Angry Chinese Blogger did an excellent job chronicling the incident. He (she?), too, warned that there might be dire implications for the CCP.

The recent rise in unrest has Beijing concerned for a number of reasons, not least of all because the potential for isolated incidents of unrest to spread in a so called ‘domino effect’ by which news of a lax response to protests in one region might embolden protestors in another, or news of a heavy handed response might enrage others into action.

The presence of nationalist roots in violent anti-Japanese demonstrations is particularly worrying to Beijing.

Using nationalists to rally people against Japan has been a useful tool for China, drawing people towards a single unified external cause and away from domestic issues but, should nationalist elements feel that Beijing isn’t doing enough to pressure Japan, they could easily turn on Beijing. Using their organizational structure and support to form a political or physical opposition to the government.

So where do we stand now, a week later? According to the most recent article, the euphoria that came with the uprising in Huankantou has been replaced by something more akin to dread.

In driving off more than 1,000 riot police at the start of the week, Huankantou village in Zhejiang province is at the crest of a wave of anarchy that has seen millions of impoverished farmers block roads and launch protests against official corruption, environmental destruction and the growing gap between urban wealth and rural poverty.

China’s media have been forbidden to report on the government’s loss of control, but word is spreading quickly to nearby towns and cities. Tens of thousands of sightseers and wellwishers are flocking every day to see the village that beat the police.

But the consequences for Huankantou are far from clear.

Having put more than 30 police in hospital, five critically, the 10,000 residents should be bracing for a backlash. Instead, the mood is euphoric. Children have not been to school since Sunday’s clash. There are roadblocks outside the chemical factory that was the origin of the dispute. Late at night the streets are full of gawping tourists, marshalled around the battleground by proud locals who bellow chaotic instructions through loudspeakers….

But in Huankantou, villagers do not seem to realise that although they have won the battle, they may be far from winning the war.

Amid a crowd of locals beside a wrecked bus, one middle-aged woman won a cheer of approval by calling for the government to make the first move towards reconciliation.

“It’s up to them to start talking,” she said. “I don’t know what we would do if the police came back again, but our demand is to make the factory move out of the village [a polluting factory that was ruining farmers’ crops]. We will not compromise on that.”

I’ve always been of the school that for all the improvements in China, there is a huge groundswell of resentment, mainly fueled by corruption and poverty, that might be ignited at any time — but only under the right circumstances. When I first heard about this story, I felt a profound sense that this was not such a catalytic event: It involved too few victims, it wasn’t of a regime-threatening scale, and there were still too many positive things going on throughout China to soften rage against the regime (namely, the economy). I believe if and when the Big Event occurs that throws the CCP into life-threatening chaos, it will, as with most revolutions, be an economic event, like a failing of the banks, hyperinflation or deflation.

So is this story now dead in the water, or is it a sign of more massive riots and violence to come? Some of the warbloggers said they had it “on good authority” that we haven’t seen anything yet and that the CCP is indeed on the verge of collapse. That was last week, and now the story seems to have little life to it. So what did Huankantou mean? Tempest in a teapot or tragic foreshadowing of new and more lethal violence to come?

Update: Looking back at the original post that piqued my interest in this story, I have to wonder about its chief contention:

Huge riots are occurring, not just in the remote, impoverished west, but now in the wealthier coastal cities. At issue is corruption and impunity. And with the rise of mass communications and Internet connectivity, Chinese expectations about governance are rising. A billion people are getting sick of all the corruption and oppression they see around them.

The root of the problem is this: the government will not renounce unworkable communism as its philosophy. It says communism is its system but capitalism is its policy. That contradiction leaves the worst bureaucratic and political features of communism in place (you can’t get rid of anyone via ballot box, for one thing), while the growing private sector watches the horror from an increasingly capitalist framework. This is big news. Thomas explains that China’s repression is not a sign of its government’s strength, but its weakness. Read it here.

I just want to ask my friends in China, and those conected with China: IS THIS TRUE? Are huge anti-government riots breaking out across China with the backing of 1 billion peasants? And if so, is the ideology of capitalism versus communism at the heart of the protests, as the blogger claims? I’m just trying to separate the wheat from the chaff because, to my bemusement and amazement, some normally smart bloggers have been saying essentially the same thing as Publius.

Look, I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge it if it’s true, and I can’t say I’d be all that upset to see the CCP reap some of the misery its sown (if that in turn leads to a better system). But where is the proof?? I’ve heard of riots on and off in China for years, and this one was certainly more violent than most, but does that mean we are on the brink of the CCP’s collapse? For now, I have no choice but to say no, not because I’m picking sides but because the key finger-pointers, with Glenn Reynolds’ blessing, aren’t backing up the claims with anything resembling substance. And their attempt to portray it as a riot against the CCP for not renouncing communism is absurd. No one cares about that, as lon as there’s food on the table. Most peasants aren’t willing to die for communism vs. capitalism, only if their lives, health, wealth and well being are threatened.

I began writing about China’s “blind rage” phenomenon nearly four months ago, long before the current rift catpulted the story onto the world’s front pages. Aty that time, I was afraid it was a classic example of ill-conceived overkill: While the claims may have validity (which they do), the modus operandi, I felt, was not only wrong, it was self-defeating. And, most upsettingly, it was apparent the government was subtly encouraging it for reasons of its own.

I think it’s safe to say I’ve now seen my worst-case fears confirmed.

Chanting “Japanese pigs get out,” protesters threw stones and broke windows at Japan’s consulate and Japanese restaurants in China as some 20,000 people defied government warnings to protest Tokyo’s wartime history and its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.

Peaceful protests were reported in two other cities. Beijing remained calm. Police stood guard on Tiananmen Square to block a planned demonstration in the heart of the capital, a day ahead of a visit by Japan’s foreign minister. Paramilitary police surrounded the Japanese Embassy, where protesters smashed windows last weekend.

Japan’s Embassy said two Japanese were injured in Shanghai after being surrounded by a group of Chinese, Kyodo News agency reported. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known….

n Shanghai, protesters gathered around the Japanese Consulate. Police in riot helmets kept them away from the building but let protesters throw eggs and rocks. A group of young men broke the windows of a Nissan sedan and flipped it onto its roof.

In a nearby street, protesters broke windows of about 10 Japanese-style noodle shops and bars, many of them Chinese-owned. Others broke the windows of a police car, chanting “Kill the Japanese” after a rumor spread that a man sitting inside was Japanese. The car drove away before the crowd could grab him.

The violence followed a march from City Hall to the consulate by about 5,000 people. They carried banners written in English that said “Say No to Japan in the Security Council” and chanted “Japanese pigs get out!”

Japan filed an official protest, complaining that Chinese authorities failed to stop the violence.

I don’t want to talk about the atrocities of the Japanese in WWII, with which we are all too familiar. I just want to pose the simple question(s): Has China derived any benefit from this exercise? Has it improved its standing in the world in any way? Are the world leaders impressed or are they upset by what they see? Is this likely to encourage new investment in China or scare it away? Is this a sign of continued political maturity and wisdom or of a descent into raw emotionalism?

As the article says, now that things are getting out of hand, the CCP is threatening to arrest violent protestors (having dished out plenty of help over the past week). Demonstrations that help take the heat off the CCP are fine — until they start to take on a life of their own and can no longer be choreographed, or at least contained. That’s when the CCP gets scared shitless.

There are some amazing China-related stories out this weekend, and here at home the US continues it’s precarious shift toward becoming a theocratic state. Unfortunately, I still can’t type without serious pain, no matter how many percocets I swallow.

It appears the operation worked, but I’ve learned from past experience not to get my hopes up. I’m going to try to get back to the keyboard in a few hours. What better physical therapy can there be than blogging?

Sorry about all the unanswered emails and unreplied-to comments. Soon, I promise.