Anti Japan protests in your town? 钓鱼岛

[Kenny同志]

What you’re saying here is that the protests are partly in response to the atrocities that happened in WWII. In the same war, Japan’s ally, Germany, was committing a few atrocities on citizens of many European countries, even its own people. These have been well documented and publicised. Yet today, those countries are working alongside Germany on a daily basis, hammering out ways that their people can work in closer and closer economic partnership. There are occasional jesting references to Germany’s expansionist tendencies, but no one treats Angela Merkel as if she has their grandmother’s head on a spike in her garden.

I’m no historian, so perhaps someone could make this clear. Does the present Japanese government a) refuse to acknowledge the atrocities occurred, or b) insist that they were the right thing to do and, if given the chance, they’d do them again? There are no doubt individuals in Japan who do, and the Tokyo mayor may be that way inclined, or playing to that constituency, just as there are individuals in Germany who, with various degrees of openness, look back nostalgically on the good old days of the gas chambers.

Hi, Liwei, I am afraid that Japan and Germany are incomparable in this regard. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army were times worse than the Germans. But Japan officially keeps denying the Nanking Massacre and allows the distribution of textbooks distorting its invasion of China; its leadership keep visiting the notorious Yasukuni Shrine which honours the country’s war criminals, let alone compensating Chinese victims in the war. By contrast, many former German chancellors, i.e. Konrad Adenauer, Roman Herzog, Johannes Rau, Helmut Kohl, Willy Brandt, Walter Scheel, and Gerhard Schroder had formally apologised to the Jews. Among them, both Willy Brandt and Gerhard Schroder had even knelt at the memorial to the 1943 Jewish Uprisig in Warsaw, one in 1970, the other in 2004.

Also, Germany has been actively compensating the living Jews who were victimised by Nazi Germany. What has Japan done? Nothing. It has not shown even a minimum of repentance. Worse still, it is making trouble.

The argument “At some point in history, someone of nationality X did something horrible to someone of my nationality, so today I’m going to commit acts of violence on people and property of nationality X” doesn’t make a lot of sense, no matter how many someones, how many victims, and how far back you have to go. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atrocities. Just about every nationality or ethnic group, if you go back far enough, is guilty of something or other. I don’t think you’d have to scratch very hard at Chinese history to find examples, and I won’t try.

Why should a Japanese student, born long after the atrocities and having no choice about their nationality, suffer for this? Or a Chinese person driving a Japanese car? Or working in a factory making Japanese cars? or running a franchise of a Japanese-themed restaurant? You may as well pick random strangers out of the phonebook and unleash your anger on them, for all the good it will do, for all the justice it will bring.

I made it very clear in my post that such acts are illegal and should be punished by law. I really can’t figure out why you bring this up after others.

PS: Violent protesting is being criticised by many more sensible Chinese. And all the Chinese media are advocating 理性愛國 (rational patriotism).

[Kenny同志]

True, that is what launched the latest tensions, but to be fair, it's hard to know what else they could have done. The Tokyo government was planning on buying the islands and populating them in order to strengthen Japan's claim, which would have been much more provocative. The national government bought the islands in order to ensure they could not be populated, thus maintaining the status quo as best they could.

What do you think the Japanese government should have done?

Neither of the purchases is acceptable to China. No one’s sure whether the whole thing was orchestrated by Japan or not. From the Chinese perspective, the official purchase of the Islands by the Japanese government is even worse as then it would have better reasons to own the Islands.

The best thing they can do is to force the right-wing man to cancel the purchase and maintain the status quo.

[fanglu]

The best thing they can do is to force the right-wing man to cancel the purchase and maintain the status quo.

But how? The purchase was being funded by donations, not by Tokyo government money, and even if it was Tokyo government money, does the national government have the legal ability to control what the Tokyo government spends its money on?

Even if the national government could stop this particular purchase, there's nothing stopping the owners of the islands selling them to someone else. If I own some land (regardless of which country's jurisdiction it's in) and I want to sell it, I should be able to. If the islands had been sold to a private owner and they wanted to develop them, could the Japanese government have stopped them? Wouldn't this have been worse than the national government purchasing the islands?

[Kenny同志]

The so-called owner has no right to sell something that belongs to someone else. It's all a scheme.

PS: A Chinese proverb says: "兼聽則明, 偏信則暗", meaning "listen to both sides and you will be enlighted; heed only to one side and you will be benighted". I hope many of you could spend a little while listenning to what Chinese scholars have to say on the matter as well.

[fanglu]

If it's a scam, the Kurihara family was scammed too - they paid for the islands.

Even if you agree that the islands are legitimately Chinese territory and Japan has no claim whatsoever to them, its a bit rough to say the people who bought the islands in good faith should be thrown out without any compensation.

[Kenny同志]

It’s still unknown yet whether the Japanese government bought the islands in good faith or otherwise. But if we look at the matter from a historical perspective, the purchase might not be executed with good intentions.

[gato]

The Tokyo government was planning on buying the islands and populating them in order to strengthen Japan's claim, which would have been much more provocative. The national government bought the islands in order to ensure they could not be populated, thus maintaining the status quo as best they could.

What do you think the Japanese government should have done?

Japan has a unitary form of government (as opposed to federal like Germany or the United States). The national government has a lot of power over the local governments. There are probably quite a number of legal grounds under which the national government could have stopped the local government from buying the islands (e.g., buying an island is outside the scope of local authority). If nothing else, they probably could have stopped the Tokyo government on broad national security grounds.

However, blocking the purchase probably would have been politically unpopular. As another poster pointed out, the Tokyo government is elected and enjoys public support, which suggests that any step taken by the national government to stop the Tokyo government would have resulted in a public backlash. There might even be protests on the streets. So the most politically feasible step for them was for the national government to purchase the island.

So the bottom line is that the national government nationalized the islands because it was the politically popular thing. If the national government hadn't done it, the Tokyo would have done it. Should they really to be congratulated for political courage?

Analogizing it to another territorial dispute might make it easier to think about it. If the government of Jerusalem wanted to buy land in the West Bank that is claimed by the Palestinians and the national government of Israel stepped in and bought it instead, would we not say that it's a serious provocation whether the local or the national government did it?

[fanglu]

If nothing else, they probably could have stopped the Tokyo government from buying the island on broad national security grounds.

Possibly. I don't know enough about the Japanese legal system to know if that's true. Even if they could, it seems a bit unfair on the owners, who would then have a very expensive asset they couldn't do anything with. Presumably the Japanese government would have to pay them compensation. Don't know that that would really be any different from buying it from them.

I guess I'm just not a fan of 'The government should do something!' rhetoric without thinking about exactly what the government should do. It's like all the protests against the anti-Islam video these last couple of weeks. What should the US government do? Block Youtube?

[skylee]

How did the "owners" come to own those islands?

[gato]

See here for background on the previous "private owners".

http://www.japanfocu...Wani-Yukio/3792

In 1895, after Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War was assured, the Japanese government passed a cabinet resolution to annex the Senkaku Islands. Koga was given a lease to the islands and sent workers from Okinawa to operate a bonito processing plant and to gather albatross feathers. At its peak, there were more than 200 people working on the island, though it is not known how they managed to live in this isolated place with no gas or electricity and limited supplies of water.

After the war, with Okinawa under US military administration, Kuba and Taisho islands were used as targets for bombing practice, but the US military did not take any measures against the fishing boats from neighboring countries that frequented the waters around the islets. Fishing boats from Taiwan were especially numerous. Taiwanese fishermen would land on Uotsuri Island during stormy weather and wait for the seas to subside. It is reported that the island was lined with shacks built by Taiwanese fishermen.

The history of the Bao-Diao Movement can be traced to 1970. As the reversion of Okinawa approached, increasing the possibility that control over the Senkaku Islands would be returned to Okinawa, Taiwanese students in the United States began to speak out. A rally was held at Princeton University on November 17, 1970 to demand that the Diaoyu Islands be returned to Taiwan. The previous year, Taiwanese authorities had declared sovereignty over natural resources in the continental shelf beyond the limits of the country’s coastal territorial waters.

On January 29, 1971, as the Okinawa reversion agreement entered its final countdown, two thousand foreign students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere surrounded United Nations headquarters in New York, demanding the “defense of the Daioyu Islands.”

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou, who was then a graduate student at Harvard, was caught up in the movement. Ma was studying for a doctorate in law and later wrote a thesis, arguing that the Diaoyu Islands belong to the Republic of China (published in English in 1980 as Trouble Over Oily Waters: Legal Problems of Seabed Boundaries and Foreign Investments in the East China Sea, and in 1982 in a revised Chinese edition).

However, when the People’s Republic of China was admitted to the UN in October 1971, the Republic of China lost its UN representation, and foreign students from Taiwan stepped back from the Bao-Diao Movement. With the reversion of Okinawa in May 1972, the Senkaku Islands came under Japan’s jurisdiction. People in Hong Kong anticipated that the Diaoyu Islands would be returned to China under the China-Japan Joint Declaration in September of that year, but these hopes did not materialize. David Ko notes with regret, “Even though China defeated Japan’s war of aggression, the US unilaterally turned over administration of the Diaoyu Islands to the losing side.”

http://www.japantime...20120721a9.html

The Kurihara family has owned four of the Senkaku chain's five uninhabited islets for decades. The central government currently owns the islet of Taishojima. The family bought the four islands from Zenji and Hanako Koga, whose family had been managing them since the 1890s and promised that if they were to eventually sell them, the new owners could only be the central government or a Japanese municipality.

The Kurihara family bought Kitakojima and Minamikojima in 1972, followed by Uotsuri in 1978 and Kuba in 1988. Hiroyuki Kurihara's brother, Kunioki, is the current official owner of Kitakojima, Minamikojima and Uotsuri, while a younger sister owns Kuba.

[roddy]

After a quick ban and a warning off, can I ask everyone to avoid posting while angry, drunk, tired, emotional, fevered, upset, outraged, agitated or rushed. If it ain't rational, calm and constructive, I don't want to see it.

New posters, don't bother. If you're signing up to post in this topic, head to the China Daily forums or something.

Apologies if that seems unreasonable but there are posts in this topic I'm ashamed to be hosting. Seriously.

[pancake]

Hi' date=' Liwei, I am afraid that Japan and Germany are incomparable in this regard. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army were times worse than the Germans.[/quote']

Really, Kenny, really? I mean, I know about the sick shit the Japanese pulled in China (Nanjing massacre, unit 731, ...) but the Germans weren't exactly angels either. Read up on the gas chambers and the experiments of one "Dr" Josef Mengele if you get the chance.

At some point, though, you have to let bygones be bygones. What's the purpose of celebrating the 81st anniversary of 9/18? Of nationalistic chest pounding, and agressive anti-Japanism? Don't participate in the regime-orchestrated "two minutes hate," you're better than that.

[studychinese]

Are we really debating the legitimacy of rioting? If we are, let's look at the rioters.

Before making the decision to burn down a building, beat or kill someone that looks Japanese or drives a Japanese car, or rob a store of foreign products, one must be convinced of the righteousness of his cause.

Since the rioters have made this decision, and have been burning, maiming, and looting, let us ask how much due diligence these rioters have done before rioting. How many of them are familiar with international law and sovereignty issues? How many of them are aware of all the issues surrounding the Senkaku Islands? How many of them made an effort to examine the claims by the other side?

We all know that the answer is none of them. Yes, they are convinced they are right, but they are just an ignorant mob.

How long then before any foreigner is targeted? Things have a tendency to get out of hand, and Chinese television and newspaper articles have been fanning the flames until recently.

[count_zero]

"let us ask how much due diligence these rioters have done before rioting"

Lol... Nationalistic people are mostly poor and with a low IQ.

From the SCMP

When editors of online news portals saw traditional print media boldly talking about reform and questioning the protesters' tactics, they realised they could do the same thing.

Tencent.com published an article that said: "Creating an atmosphere of panic is not patriotism."

It analysed nationalism on the mainland, suggesting the poor, the less educated, migrant workers and party members were more nationalistic than others.

Shen Gezhi , a popular young writer, wrote on his microblog the protesters' violent behaviour should be forgiven because nationwide demonstrations were rare on the mainland and must have had official sanction.

"Chinese people don't have much experience of protesting; they need some time to practise," Shen wrote.

[count_zero]

The SCMP also has some quotes from AWW about how the protests were organised but if I post that Roddy will have a conniption fit.

You can have this one instead.

Really hope they get the guys who nearly bricked a guy to death in Xi'an!

Shenzhen police issue pictures of anti-Japan riot suspects

Shenzhen police have released surveillance images of 20 protesters in the hunt for suspects linked to violence during anti-Japan demonstrations on the mainland during the past two weeks.

The public is being urged to come forward with information about the suspects, with the promise of unspecified rewards. And police have also called on the protesters to turn themselves in or face more severe punishments if caught.

Hunts for suspects are also under way in other mainland cities, including Xian, Qingdao and Changsha, as mainland authorities move to contain the protests over instability concerns ahead of a key Communist Party congress in the next few weeks.

In Xian, Shaanxi province, police released two photos of a young man wearing a white T-shirt who was linked to the mobbing of a 51-year-old man in a Japanese-made car on September 15. The man suffered a severe head wound.

Violent protests targeting Japanese interests and related businesses have erupted in dozens of mainland cities since September 15 over the Diaoyu Islands dispute. Many Japanese stores and car dealerships were looted or set ablaze, while Japanese-made vehicles were also damaged and burned in the streets.

In Shenzhen, protests on September 16 along Shennan Boulevard, a major city thoroughfare, quickly escalated into violence targeting government compounds and vehicles, forcing police to deploy tear gas to disperse the crowd in front of the city's party committee offices.

Police in Guangdong have detained more than three dozen protesters in criminal investigations, including seven people in Shenzhen, The Southern Metropolis News reported yesterday.

The newspaper quoted "numerous police officers" as saying that many protesters harboured bitterness and were easily agitated. The Shenzhen arrests included migrant factory workers.

"Some joined the protest after they saw internet postings, but some simply joined a procession in the middle of the road when they saw others damaging vehicles of Japanese brands," the police were quoted as saying.

He Zhongzhou, general executive of the Blue Labourer Co-operation, a Shenzhen-based NGO specialising in work-study programmes for factory workers, said the implication of mostly migrant workers in the violent protests over the past week had highlighted an the underlying cause, particularly in Guangdong, which had a very large migrant workforce.

"The underlying issue here is not about whether migrant workers are more tempted to join the violence, but about the growing discontent among the grass-roots people - those with small salaries and little access to social welfare," he said.

"The protests over the Diaoyu Islands simply offer them a conduit to express that."

He said authorities needed to heed the grievances among the less-privileged masses.

He also believed their resorting to violence was a result of a general failure in the mainland's education system to cultivate a sense of civil obedience.

[Brian US]

A giant mural was painted on a major university campus here in Beijing depicting a small child labeled Diaoyu crying and a Japanese WWII soldier with a bayonet pointed at him. The Chinese writing asked Diaoyu not to cry, you are apart of China, and China will protect you. The name of the university was signed below, but was quickly whited out within 1-2 hours with the mural still there two weeks later. My Chinese classmates didn't find a problem with it, and balked at the idea that it depicted a Japanese soldier about to bayonet a small Chinese child. They simply saw the child representing Diaoyu, because the islands themselves are small.

A few foreign classmates went to see the protests at the Japanese embassy last week in Beijing. One classmate went on Thursday when the subway station nearby was closed and police blocked everyone from getting near. He decided to sit on a curb nearby to see how things panned out, but it was very uneventful. Eventually a plane clothed man came up and told him to leave, when he asked the Chinese man who he was, the man simply responded that he was "the leader." He remained seated, with another Chinese man coming up to criticize him (white foreigner) for coming to his country (China).

[Scandinavian]

I was wondering. Was there any further protests this past weekend?

Also, how has the protests been in Taiwan. Did the Taiwanese people protest in the same manner as people in the bigger Chinese cities?

[OneEye]

Also, how has the protests been in Taiwan. Did the Taiwanese people protest in the same manner as people in the bigger Chinese cities?

I sometimes wonder if people post crap like this with the intention to stir up trouble. This conflict is between the Chinese and Japanese governments, so why bring Taiwan into it? It has very little to do with Taiwan, other than the fact that some believe Taiwan has as much claim on the Diaoyu Islands as either of the other two countries (though I believe you'll find the Taiwanese government has pretty much stayed out of it).

Most Taiwanese people I've talked to are paying attention to this conflict between China and Japan, but don't care much one way or the other. And every single one has expressed disgust and horror about how people in China are dealing with the situation. There have been a few small protests here, but from where I sit it seems like the people who really care about it are very few. What's more, my Japanese friends here don't have any reason to feel the least bit endangered, which is more than anyone can say about Japanese people in China right now.

[Scandinavian]

I sometimes wonder if people post crap like this with the intention to stir up trouble. This conflict is between the Chinese and Japanese governments, so why bring Taiwan into it? It has very little to do with Taiwan, other than the fact that some believe Taiwan has as much claim on the Diaoyu Islands as either of the other two countries (though I believe you'll find the Taiwanese government has pretty much stayed out of it).

Why is this crap. Is it the use of the word "Manner" I in no way mean to say that I think the people of Taiwan are joining the mindless rampage against anything Japanese. However from China, the perspective is often that Taiwan is part of China, that the only claim China has to the islands is through Taiwan. Therefore the reactions from Taiwan are relevant. As the media has mainly covered the protests in Mainland China, a small peaceful protest in front of the Japanese "embassy" in Taipei could have gone by unnoticed. This is why I ask.

When you say "but don't care much one way or the other" do you mean that people are indifferent if the islands are under Japan or China, or they are indifferent to the current conflict.

[OneEye]

Why is this crap. Is it the use of the word "Manner" I in no way mean to say that I think the people of Taiwan are joining the mindless rampage against anything Japanese.

I was not under that impression, and I have no clue where you got that. What I took offense to was the implication that Taiwan is a part of China ("Chinese cities"). I understand the Chinese perspective on Taiwan's status, but that does not make it so. My impression from here in Taipei is that the vast, vast majority of the Taiwanese population does not view Taiwan as a part of China, so the reactions from Taiwan would not be relevant from the perspective of China's claim on the islands. I think most people are just hoping there's not a war. There is a very small (but fairly vocal) number of people who have been calling on Taiwan and China to work together on this issue, but IMO they should not be taken to represent majority Taiwanese sentiment.

As I said, people here are following the conflict very closely, probably mostly out of nervousness about tension in the area. I haven't heard anyone express strong opinions one way or the other about whether China or Japan gets it. Of course, that may be because people think it should go to Taiwan, but I don't know for sure. I have heard a few people say that they hope the islands go to Japan, but that was mostly out of disgust with how people are behaving in China right now, so I don't think you can take that to mean much.