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China’s visceral hate for Japanese paymaster
China needs Japan too much to indulge its ancient rivalry, says Joseph Mackertich
The troubled Olympic torch comes to Japan tomorrow. Although it will only be in the country for a day, it is arguably the most significant episode so far in the bizarre spectacle that the torch relay has become.
As a rule Chinese people despise the Japanese. An overwhelming majority of Chinese - including intelligent, educated people - see the Japanese as arrogant, violent and greedy and it is doubtful whether the government can convince the Chinese to put their hatred on hold for the sake of a harmonious summer Games.
During both the Asian Cup in 2004 and the Women's World Cup in 2007 (football events both held in China), the Japanese teams were harassed. Come August, flags will be burned and people hurt, much like during the anti-Japanese protests that shook the streets of Shanghai in 2005.
The most obvious grounds for animosity are that China feels Japan has yet to properly apologise for its murderous conduct during World War 2, although resentment existed before this.
At the start of the 20th century, the Qing Court felt humiliated that China, traditionally the regional superpower, had become 'the weak man of Asia' while the 'Japanese dwarfs' went from strength to strength under the Meiji Restoration.
Resentment is not only still rife, surveys show that it is actually greater in the current generation than in those that lived through the war. This is not a surprise. The Chinese state-run press inundates the public with stories depicting the Japanese as duplicitous, perverted and sadistic.
A favourite of Chinese editors is to run stories about Japanese businessmen holding orgies in Hainan, a tropical coastal province.
Aware of the tension present under the surface of Chinese society, the government milks the public's loathing of Japan - diverting attention from its own shortcomings. It may now be too late to undo the decades of negative propaganda that have defined Japan in the eyes of ordinary Chinese people.
At its heart however, the Chinese-Japanese quarrel is startlingly superficial. The Japanese and Chinese economies are so closely linked that any real disagreement would have dire consequences for both countries.
Since 2000 trade between Japan and China has doubled to almost $200bn a year. In terms of a pure business relationship, China, as one of the world's biggest manufacturers, and Japan, one of the world's biggest consumers, is a marriage made in heaven.
Culturally, too, China's young are more receptive to Japan than they would care to admit. A teenager living in Hangzhou may claim to hate Japanese people but they may very well watch Japanese soap operas, play Japanese video games or listen to Japanese pop music.
The Chinese government needs Japan as a scapegoat, but needs it more as a business partner. ·
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As you so rightly observe, the Chinese Communist Party uses Japan as a scapegoat to turn public loathing away from itself.
Prize-winning Chinese writer Xu Zhigeng estimates the number of those killed by the Japanese in the Nanjing massacre at over 300,000 dead. Maybe he won the prixe for coming up with the highest figure. But it still doesn't beat the number who died in a similar massacre ordered eleven years later by a Chinese general, Lin Biao, presumably (according to Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's version of events) at the behest of that arch Malthusian, Mao Zedong. Lin's actual words used on May 30th 1948 were "turn Changchun into a city of death". This was achieved by blocking all food going into the city and refusing exit to anyone, man, woman or infant in arms. Towards the end of the five-month-long agony, starving mothers were coming out to offer their babes to the soldiers who barred their exit, while begging to be killed themselves. Changchun's mayor's estimate was of 170,000 survivors out of an initial population of half a million. Do the math.
You are very ignorant about the difference of opinions about Japan between the communist government of China and orindary Chinese people.
(1) The Communist government does not hate Japan. The communists came to power in China largely because of the Japanese invasion. Before the Japanese invasion, the communists were on the edge of being eliminated by the Nationalist government of China (KMT). They were forced to take the long march (which was really a long flee). The Japanese invasion gave the communists an opportunity to regroup and re-establish their base while the nationalist government fought the Japanese. The CCP eventually won the Chinese civil war post Japanese invasion because of the army and resources they cumulated during the anti-Japanese war. Mao personally thanked a Japanese war criminal who visited China in the 1960's for helping out the communists. When Deng Xiaoping took over in China, he visited Japan to establish a "friendly" relationship with Japan. That was one of his first foreign visits. Chinese government today is making a ton of money from Japan and they'd like to have a good relationship with Japan.
(2) The Chinese people, however, remember the crimes that the Japanese committed in China, most of which westerners never heard. This hatred is not from government propaganda. This is from the sotries told by the grandparanets, the true grass-root sentiment. Japan's refusal to acknowledge its crimes during WWII only deepened this hatred.
The CCP and the Chinese people are directly at odds when it comes to Japan. The government had to make some tough stands on Japan despite of the amount of money they made with the Japanese because of the sentiment of the people. If the CCP does not stand tough against Japan, they would be overthrown at home.
Remember, Chinese people hate Japan; Chinese government not so much.