daigo.org

Scary. When a group of Chinese protesters throws rocks and eggs into Japanese Consulate, Japanese shops, restaurants and Japanese-made cars (though they were assembled in China and a poor Chinese person purchased it), with some yelling “Kill Japanese!”, something is wrong.

It’s been three weeks now since the first Anti-Japanese demonstration in Beijing. It was originally triggered by Japan’s approval (or non-refusal on ban, depending on how you look at it) of a new middle schoolers history text book which is written by group called Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform. China says its Japan’s whitewashing of wartime atrocities. I glanced through it online, and I tend to agree with Chinese stance. I felt like there was very little mention of WWII while I was growing up in Japan anyway, I feel like saying, “why reduce what’s already not there?” I read other documents after I was much older and learned a lot that I didn’t know (one of them was The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, which depressed me for weeks). It is an understandably super sensitive issue anyway, so I can see how the Chinese people get angry over this issue. However, what I didn’t like about this is the role that Chinese government and police played. A quote from NY Times article

…yet the police herded protesters into tight groups, let them take turns throwing rocks, then told them they had “vented their anger” long enough and bused them back to campus.
“It was partly a real protest and partly a political show,” Mr. Sun said in an interview this week. “I felt a little like a puppet.”

Chinese government could have stopped the protest, they have in the past. I feel China used it’s people’s anger toward Japan to send a message on other issues: (A) Japan’s intention to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and (B) Japan’s claim for Diaoyu/Senkaku Island

By last weekend it had spread to six large cities, and got more violent. So Japan demands apology and China refused. It is getting messy and more scary by the minute, and there are tons of good read out there: csmonitor.com’s Daily Update, An interesting Taiwanese view, BusinessWeek’s International Outlook. (and more from Google news)

Personally I am a little concerned about Koizumi’s Bush-like foreign-policy arrogance (or at least it may look that way to some people, much like how W comes across…), but Koizumi and President Hu Jintao may meet at an Asia-Africa conference in Indonesia this weekend and I hope they will reach intelligent, peaceful agreement. And I think they will.

And on the completely not related note: Economist’s article about Drinking in Japan was fascinating

Update: Global oices posting and Joi Ito’s Posting

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 04/21/2005 @ 12:33 pm and is filed under Asian Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.