WHAT'S AT STAKE WHEN 20,000 IN SHANGHAI TAKE TO THE STREETS?
By Aaron Kyle Dennis

** Saturday, April 16, saw tens of thousands of Chinese demonstrating against Japan.  --  But it may be the Chinese Central Party that's left reeling.  --  Aaron Dennis looks at the causes and ponders the outcomes of China's anti-Japan protests. **

United for Peace of Pierce County
April 25, 2005

[PHOTO CAPTION: Saturday's demonstrators were primarily college students and individuals under 35 years old. This same age group has ironically been reported as harboring a stronger anti-Japanese protest than those older than 35, who are more likely to have first-hand experience of Japanese wartime brutality.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Protesters were led in a wide array of cries, chants, and songs.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: A scene from an outbreak of violence against a Japanese eatery on the way to the consulate. Here, anti-Japan stickers have been affixed to the window, which itself has been broken with a rock. The owner peered out at the demonstration shortly before the assault.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Police tried feebly to prevent the masses from congregating around the Japanese consulate. Note that civilians are visible on both sides of the line.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Emotions came to a climax outside the Japanese consulate, where several thousand were visible from any vantage, and where stones were cast and flags burned.]

SHANGHAI -- On Saturday, Apr. 16, at around 9:30 a.m., throngs of Chinese took to the streets around Shanghai’s People’s Square. Armed with eggs, bottles, stones, and long-standing anti-Japanese nationalist sentiment, these angry patriots flowed like a river through ten miles of the city, merging like flooded tributaries into a raging torrent of around 20,000 outside Tokyo’s consulate in the Hongqiao district.

Leading news media have cited several causes for the Apr. 16 demonstration. Earlier this month, Tokyo approved several revisionist junior high school history textbooks penned by nationalist scholars, which many in Asia feel whitewash Japan's wartime past. Apr. 13 saw the announcement that Japan had begun procedures to allocate test-drilling rights for natural gas to private contractors in a disputed area of the East China Sea. Many Chinese are also indignant over Tokyo's efforts towards a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Sino-Japanese relations have a history of tension. In stark contrast to post-war Germany, Japan has never been viewed as repentant by its Asian neighbors. Contributing to this perception are Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese World War II dead including convicted war criminals. China, for its part, conspicuously downplays economic aid packages it has received from Japan -- some 3,000 billion yen (US$27 billion) since 1980 -- while reporting on any news that casts a negative light on its wartime adversary.

Complicating this relationship was Koizumi's Sept. 27, 2004, cabinet reshuffle, in which the conservative right-wing gained several key administrative positions, including chief cabinet secretary and minister for justice. Especially inflammatory to many Chinese was the appointment of the foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, member of a conservative faction of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It was Machimura who, in March 2001, acting as minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology, approved the first two editions of the controversial junior high school history texts, The New History Textbook and The New Civics Textbook. Japan’s previous foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, was also replaced in the cabinet reorganization. Kawaguchi, who represented the more moderate side of Tokyo, was known for working towards friendly relations in the sea known to the Chinese (and much of the world) as the East China Sea, and to the Japanese as the Sea of Japan.

Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo further intensified after a Feb. 19 joint statement issued from Washington by the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee, outlining a new set of security objectives and recognizing Taiwan as "a mutual security concern." Beyond extending Japan’s military cooperation with the U.S., the agreement also pressures for a revision of the war-renouncing article of Japan’s constitution. Doing so would enable a transformation of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF), allowing aggressive military operations -- a move vehemently opposed by Beijing, which already understands the new U.S.-Japan initiative as an effort at containing China's rising military power in the Asia-Pacific region.

Political relations between the two countries have taken a turn for the worse in recent months.

First came the Chinese storm over Japan’s political maneuvering to gain a place on the U.N. Security Council. In his Mar. 21 blueprint for a revamped U.N., Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested that big financial donors to the United Nations, such as Japan and Germany, would be prime candidates for permanent Security Council membership. This suggestion, along with public support for Japan’s bid from the United States and additional efforts by Tokyo to court fellow candidates Germany, India, and Brazil, as well as to ‘buy’ the support of developing countries with economic aid packages, has motivated over 22 million private Chinese citizens to air their opposition via an online petition. Beijing is in a quandary on how to balance anti-Japanese public sentiment with its long-term economic interests (the Chinese Ministry of Commerce recently reported that Japan currently has US $47.9 billion invested in China, and China is Japan’s largest trading partner). If China does choose to use its veto against Japan, it will be the most direct confrontation between the two countries since they re-established diplomatic ties in 1972, and one of the boldest assertions of Chinese authority in recent years.

Then, on Apr. 5, the Japanese Education Ministry approved additional editions of the controversial textbooks, scorned for obscuring Japan’s World War II history by referring to evidence for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (in which an estimated 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered in six weeks at the hands of Japanese solders) as "inconclusive" and "under debate," and by downplaying or ignoring mention of Asian "comfort women" (the system of sex slaves from China, Korea and other Asian countries set up by the Japanese military and forced into prostitution in order to “comfort" Japanese soldiers). The revised editions also claim that Japan did not invade Asian countries but liberated them from Western powers, and denies blame for the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war (1894-95). In remonstration of Tokyo’s approval of the texts, a trade association for Chinese chain stores called for a boycott of products made by Japanese companies like Asahi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which it claims supported the revisions. Local media reports that in cities in northeast China where the Japanese army first made inroads into Chinese territory in 1931, Japanese goods already had been pulled from shelves in supermarkets and bars earlier this month.

Finally on Apr. 13, Tokyo began processing applications allowing private companies to explore, test, and drill for natural gas in the disputed Chunxiao gas field, an area of the East China Sea claimed by both countries. This development followed on the heels of an Apr. 4 inquiry to Beijing about the details of its extraction operations, which Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Shoichi Nakagawa claimed extended into Japan’s territory. Beijing, which began drilling in 2004, maintains that its operations are restricted to Chinese-controlled waters, and has refused to stop its operations or share information about them, citing Japan’s rejection of proposed measures for co-exploitation and joint exploration. This is the first time the Japanese government has granted drilling rights in the area, which it has refrained till now from doing mostly to avoid provoking China, although companies requested such rights as early as 1970.

There is speculation about Beijing’s role in promoting the recent anti-Japan demonstrations in reaction to these events. Contributing arguments for this perspective include the amount of press coverage given to the initial protests in Chengdu and Beijing -- an anomaly of Chinese news media, which notoriously silences reports on mass demonstrations -- as well as what Japan's Foreign Ministry has deemed Beijing’s tacit acceptance of the "destructive and violent actions," stating: “Even though information was available beforehand to infer that there would be a demonstration, nothing was done to prevent it.” Japanese Foreign Minister Machimura has filed a formal complaint against Chinese authorities’ failure to stop the violence and to protect Japan's diplomatic and commercial facilities from damage. Beijing, blaming Tokyo for inciting the demonstrations, refuses apology. [See: "Japan seeks China talks on riots," Associated Press, Apr. 17, 2005, and Ben Blanchard and Benjamin Kang Lim, "Thousands Join Anti-Japan Protests in East China," Reuters, Apr. 16, 2005.]

It is also true that Party officials have taken measures against their spread. Before Saturday’s protest, the Shanghai government spokeswoman Jiao Yang called for calm and asked residents not to participate in unauthorized demonstrations. A circular passed around various companies and government agencies in Shanghai last Friday asked managers to ensure that their employees obeyed all laws and regulations on protesting. [See Christopher Bodeen, "Anti-Japanese Rampage in China," Associated Press, Apr. 16, 2005.] Moreover, state television did not mention the Shanghai demonstrations during evening news reports in what appears to be an effort towards curbing hostilities and preserving friendly economic relations. A subsequent protest planned for earlier this week in Beijing also never came to fruition, though hundreds of police still blanketed Tiananmen Square. Finally, many anti-Japan websites have been blocked in recent days, and universities in Beijing and Shanghai have cut access to online bulletin boards as authorities seek to reassert control over public discourse.

Tokyo, too, has been working to ease tensions. On April 22 in Jakarta, Indonesia, Koizumi expressed “deep remorse” and extending “a formal apology” for his country’s WWII actions. According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency, said Koizumi's remarks echoed a 1995 speech of former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Although not breaking much new ground in Tokyo’s reconciliatory statements, Koizumi’s apology is the first public apology offered by a Tokyo official since Tomiichi Murayama. Chinese President Hu Jintao and China’s ambassador to South Korea, Li Bin, however, both replied to Koizumi’s remarks by saying that actions speak louder than words, and with Hu noting that relations would further improve if Tokyo refused to support any moves towards independence by Taiwan.

The flood of anti-Japan demonstrations spread to Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hangzhou this past weekend. Waving banners that read “The anti-Japan war is not over yet,” and chanting “We love our China; we hate your Japan,” and in English “We want war,” demonstrators made it undeniably clear they were not merely marching in protest of a textbook or to decry Japan’s bid for Security Council membership. More than a dozen Japanese restaurants, shops and bars (many of them Chinese-owned) had rocks flung through their windows and were pelted with crimson red paint bombs; a (Chinese-owned) Nissan sedan was smashed and overturned; and a police car alleged to be protecting a Japanese passenger had its windshield broken out while onlookers chanted "Kill the Japanese!" Police standing in lines three-deep, not with the intention to block demonstrators, but to guide them; police behind a professionally printed blue-and-white sign reading; “March route continues in this direction”; police sipping lattes with demonstrators in café’s – these scenes do not even hint at an urge towards suppressing anti-Japanese hostilities.

Still, the bigger question that arises out of last Saturday’s demonstration – and those leading up to it over the past three weeks in Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Beijing, among others – is not one of the Chinese government’s agenda in allowing anti-Japan protesters to publicly voice their opinion. The bigger question is this: in a new era of online petitions with twenty two million signatories and of public demonstrations of twenty thousand organized primarily by SMS and email, in what ways will Chinese citizens be able to shape future government agendas? It is possible that equipped with an understanding of how to organize en masse and seemingly under the radar of Beijing’s censures, younger Chinese may begin encouraging others to take to the streets against corruption and government land seizures, to complain about economic inequality or ideological repression. That is to say, with a slight change of focus, Beijing may see a change of course in its internal affairs towards more turbulent political waters.

--Aaron Dennis is a Teacher-Ambassador for Pearl S. Buck International, working in Zhenjiang, China's Jiangsu province. Dennis moved to China on the advice of his friend and former professor, Sidney Rittenberg (Li Dunbai), to gain first-hand experience in Asia before attending graduate school for Peace and Conflict Research. He can be contacted at dennisak@alumni.plu.edu.