-Caveat Lector- Nationalistic Dissidents Press For Hard-Hitting Policies On Japan, Taiwan, U.S. By CHARLES HUTZLER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL March 19, 2004; Page A1 BEIJING -- When China was considering giving a huge contract for a Beijing-Shanghai bullet train to a Japanese consortium last summer, Lu Yunfei had a visceral reaction. "Why should we give our money to a country that won't atone for its war crimes?" the computer programmer asks. To protest the move, Mr. Lu and seven other young professionals launched a petition drive on an Internet site they'd set up a year earlier, the Patriots' Alliance Web. The appeal used Japan's World War II atrocities in China to argue that the People's Republic should take its business elsewhere. Their goal was 10,000 online signatures. Within 10 days, they had 87,320. That helped persuade the Railway Ministry to derail the Japanese bid and to reconsider German and French offers for the $15 billion project, ministry advisors say. "That's impact," says Mr. Lu, a squat 29-year-old with wire-rim glasses, neatly parted hair and a bookish demeanor. Mr. Lu, who says his site gets 80,000 visits a day, is one of many Chinese activists now using the Web to tap into nationalist sentiments that have been a palpable undercurrent here for years. The result is a new political force that's influencing the policies of a Communist government unaccustomed to dealing with public opinion, constraining leaders' options at a time when China is increasingly entwined in global affairs. Dozens of nationalistic sites now dot Chinese cyberspace, with targets far beyond Japan's brutal 1931-45 occupation of parts of China. Some sites savage the U.S. as a bully pursuing China's containment. A few call for boycotts of foreign-made goods. And others encourage Taiwan to unite with China and threaten military action if the island refuses -- most recently in a campaign by Mr. Lu's network that officials here worry could help fuel an anti-China backlash in tomorrow's elections on the island. (See related article) For now, the government appears to be tolerating this sort of activism, surprising given that it routinely arrests dissidents and rigorously polices Web sites. Beijing sometimes finds the carping useful, citing public wrath in talks with Japanese officials and U.S. trade negotiators to resist making concessions. Chinese Internet experts say the profusion of online chatter makes censorship a matter of triage, with only the most pointed criticisms excised. Moreover, nationalist activists like Mr. Lu are much less threatening to the Communist Party than pro-democracy dissidents who directly challenge its power monopoly; the nationalists generally want a stronger government, not a different one. The government itself is increasingly tracking public opinion in this fast-changing society, ordering agencies in recent years to set up Web sites that can accept complaints online. An online group's poster urges China not to award a big railway contract to a Japanese consortium. "Policy-makers can't make decisions based on public opinion, but they can't ignore it either," says Li Minggang, who runs the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Web site. The site is among the government's most popular, drawing 1.2 million visits in three years and countless complaints about China's foreign policy. Some are so scathing that software is used to remove expletives, and warnings remind users to keep postings civil. Samplings are compiled for top officials. "Mostly, they say we're too weak," says Mr. Li. Much of the criticism comes from educated yuppies who grew up in the capitalist-reform era. These relatively privileged Chinese account for a disproportionate share of the country's 79.5 million Internet users. The Internet gives them a platform to vent and organize that was unavailable to past generations. Though the total number of online citizens is small compared to China's 1.3 billion population, it's a significant portion of the 430 million people who live in fast-modernizing urban areas. Mr. Lu's network is trying to fuel the nationalist sentiments of those Internet users with China's most emotional geo-political issue: Taiwan. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has a referendum on the ballot asking if defense spending should be boosted to counter Chinese missiles aimed at the island. Beijing has called the referendum a dangerous step toward a formal declaration of independence, which it has said would trigger an attack. In hopes of illustrating strong mainland support for reunification, Mr. Lu's group on March 2 initiated an online petition drive with a theme song that calls on Taiwan "to return home." "Originally, we were linked by blood," says the song, which also has been distributed on CD to 300 supporters, reporters and government officials. "Why should it break into gun barrels? Originally, the sky was endlessly clear. Why should it be grazed by shells?" The campaign has unsettled China's government. It recently has tried to mute its own aggressive rhetoric because it doesn't want to provoke a strong vote for Mr. Chen and his referendum, which in turn might raise expectations on the mainland for retaliation. Mr. Lu says China's Taiwan Affairs Office unsuccessfully pressured his group to cancel the campaign's inaugural news conference. That office declined to comment on Mr. Lu's assertion. "I'm just like everybody else -- I want a car and a big house," says Mr. Lu. "But as a Chinese, I should strongly protect national interests." Until three years ago, Mr. Lu says, he "never paid attention to politics" and spent most of his time playing computer games and strumming his guitar. A college graduate from the Yangtze River city of Chongqing, he moved here in 1998 to run the Beijing branch of an Internet-content company; he recently quit to become a consultant. His political awakening began when he read Web postings critical of Japan and climaxed in April 2002, he says, when a Japanese politician said his country could make thousands of nuclear warheads to counter China's power. "It was like a fuse being lit," says Mr. Lu. A month later, he and his friends launched the Patriots' Alliance Web to oppose what they saw as Japan's resurgent militarism. To cut costs, a friend let them use his company's Internet server. Under the sobriquet Yang Jingyu -- the name of a commander in the anti-Japanese underground communist resistance -- Mr. Lu guided the site into activism. Postings drew more than 30 people to Beijing's airport in June 2002 to welcome home a Chinese man jailed in Japan for 10 months for scrawling "Damn It" on a statue outside a Tokyo shrine honoring Japan's war dead, including some convicted World War II war criminals. Twenty people joined a "consciousness-raising trip" to Nanjing, site of a wartime massacre; to avoid attracting the attention of authorities, they went a few days before the incident's Dec. 3 anniversary. The alliance grew more ambitious last April, raising $11,000 for a trip to some small volcanic islands in the East China Sea that are controlled by Japan but claimed by China. An appeal for volunteers drew more than 100 from around the country; about 25 were chosen, including a former Air Force pilot. They planned in secret, knowing that Beijing had foiled previous excursions. The volunteers set out from the small port of Yuhuan on June 23 in a cockroach-infested fishing boat for the islands, known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku. Many got seasick on the 330-mile voyage. Japanese authorities in boats and aircraft turned the boat away at the 12-mile limit, but not before the Chinese burned a Japanese flag. The group's fears of censure or worse by the Chinese government evaporated when a reporter from the state-run Xinhua News Agency greeted the volunteers on their return to Yuhuan. His dispatch "called us 'patriots,' " says Mr. Lu, who had stayed behind in Beijing to file Web updates. These days Mr. Lu often is online with other activists until 2 a.m. from an east Beijing apartment he owns and shares with his fianc�e. Last fall, the activists bought their own server for $750, and the site now is managed by 110 volunteers under Mr. Lu's direction. "If we were a company, we would be a pretty good size," he says. Mr. Lu's group is part of a wider network of activists. On a recent weeknight, several joined him for dinner at a Beijing restaurant, including a few venture capitalists, an author, a newspaper arts reporter, a TV producer and three lawyers. Their causes are separate but related: A market researcher petitioned the legislature this month to make Sept. 18 -- the date of a 1931 Japanese attack -- a day of remembrance. The lawyers are fighting in Tokyo for compensation for Chinese civilians hurt during the occupation. "Japan killed so many people and never truly apologized. I have a duty to perform," said Guan Jianqiang, who studied in Japan for five years. Toasts were offered "for justice," to which Mr. Guan added, "for human rights." By the meal's end, the table was strewn with a dozen or so bottles of a vodka-like drink called 9-3 Beautiful Liquor, named for Sept. 3, 1945, China's victory day over Japan. Mr. Lu sees a broader range of activism in the future and hopes to turn to environmental and other domestic issues. He proudly displays a certificate from the Shenzhen government thanking his Web site for a clothing drive for the city's poor. "We're doing this for the public good, so how could the government oppose it?" he says. --Cui Rong and Qiu Haixu contributed to this article. Write to Charles Hutzler at [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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