The China syndrome
By Joseph Kahn The New York Times
TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2005
BEIJING Of all the customers his paper company has worldwide, Wang Liqun
appreciates the Japanese ones the most. Unfailingly polite and punctual, they
cultivate long-term business ties and always pay their bills, he says.
Yet even when he and his best clients share a meal and unburden
themselves with sake, they studiously steer clear of discussing the past,
certainly not the atrocities Japan committed during its World War II-era
occupation of China.
"They have a tendency to avoid sensitive topics," Wang says. He does not.
He recently told employees in his Beijing headquarters to join an uprising
against Japan and to stop buying Japanese goods, at least through May.
Surging anti-Japan sentiment, which has plunged relations between Asia's
two leading powers into crisis, has been fanned in part by official propaganda
and hotheaded Chinese youth who hurl stones into Japan's diplomatic compounds.
But pressure on Japan to face up to its history was initiated, and could be
sustained well into the future, by people like Wang, 37, who has a master's
degree in business, travels abroad, runs his own company and cares passionately
about Japanese amnesia.
Japan has joined traffic jams and the housing bubble as top concerns for
China's urban middle class. Entrepreneurs and white-collar professionals have
benefited disproportionately from China's economic policies, but many worry
their government will not press historical grievances against a major investor
and trading partner for long.
"Our government takes a soft line on foreign policy. They put economic
development first," says Li Bin, the chief executive of Nirvana, a health-club
chain. "It is critical for successful people to stand up for the rights and
interests of the country."
Such sentiments make the Japan issue - and nationalism generally -
double-edged swords for Beijing.
China reversed course late last month and ordered people to let the
government handle Japan itself. The police detained people for organizing
illegal marches. But the authorities are clearly worried that patriotic
protests could return, perhaps as soon as May 4, the anniversary of a 1919
protest that defined modern Chinese patriotism. More protests could put as much
pressure on the Chinese government as they do on Tokyo.
The Communist Party stirs patriotic feelings to underpin its own
legitimacy at a time when few, even in its own ranks, put much faith in
socialism.
Official propaganda and the state-run education system stress the
indignities China suffered at the hands of foreign powers from the mid-19th
century through World War II.
Japan, which Beijing says killed or wounded 35 million Chinese from 1937
to 1945, gets the most attention.
This spring, officials did little to stop a petition drive against
Japanese membership in the United Nations Security Council or to discourage a
boycott of Japanese goods or even to prevent unusual and sometimes violent
street protests. The government used the popular movement as leverage to demand
concessions from Tokyo and to flex its muscle at the United Nations.
But Beijing has never made nationalism the driving force in its foreign
policy. The government mainly emphasizes its desire to have a "peaceful rise"
that does not impinge on its neighbors, and the authorities are nervous about
disrupting the flow of investment and technology that has powered economic
growth.
Moreover, anti-Japan protests have a long and, for the government, a
sobering history. A student-led march on May 4, 1919, to protest the decision
by the World War I allied powers that allowed Japan to take over Germany's
colonial territories in China, spawned Chinese resistance against Western
colonialism. But the May 4 movement and similar uprisings, in 1931, 1937 and as
recently as 1987, turned against the domestic government, which has often been
viewed as too impotent or corrupt to defend national interests.
"My impression is that the well-educated elite in China are genuinely
baffled and upset by how long the government has tolerated provocation from
Japan," says Wenran Jiang, an expert on China-Japan relations at the University
of Alberta in Canada. "Every anti-Japan movement has sooner or later turned
against the government."
Officials may have turned on the tap of anti-Japanese sentiment to help
release pent-up anger and give their diplomacy a boost. But they are having a
harder time shutting it off.
Police have broadcast a blizzard of messages to cellphone users in major
cities warning against "spreading rumors, believing rumors, or joining illegal
demonstrations."
In recent days, several organizers of online petition drives and popular
protests against Japan have been detained or had their computers confiscated.
One major state-run newspaper published a viciously worded editorial warning
that anti-Japan protests were cover for an "evil conspiracy" to undermine the
government.
Even so, some urban professionals say they might take to the streets
again. Some have promoted a march on May 4, the anniversary of the 1919
movement, despite stern warnings it will not be tolerated.
"I think we need another march," says Guo Hui, 30, who runs his own
public relations company. "I feel it needs to be peaceful and well-organized.
But we have to push ahead."
Guo, who joined demonstrations in mid-April, says he is worried that the
momentum the anti-Japan movement generated will fade. He says he hopes a
boycott effort against Japanese goods can extend at least into the summer
months.
"The advantage of a march is that you pass many major intersections," he
says. "If you hand out literature to people at every intersection, you can
really have a huge impact."
Guo says he has no major grievances against the Chinese government. But
during an interview at a Starbucks in Beijing, which Guo records on his
handheld computer "to avoid any misunderstandings," he says he tends to care
much more about political and diplomatic issues than his parents' generation.
"They never got involved in anything," he says. "But I think you have
certain responsibilities as an individual. If every individual says something,
that has much more force than if the Foreign Ministry says it."
Whether such involvement might lay the foundation for Chinese civil
society, injecting a dose of pluralism into policy making, is a matter of
debate. The only test of its staying power has been patriotic demonstrations
that, at least initially, did not challenge the government.
But a senior editor at a party newspaper said the persistence of the
anti-Japan campaign and the participation of urban professionals had alarmed
the authorities. Officials are accustomed to dealing with unrest among peasants
and workers who feel defrauded or disenfranchised by China's economic boom, not
among the urban elite who are its primary beneficiaries.
"The white-collar middle class is supposed to be a pillar of stability,"
the editor said.
Li, of Nirvana, employs 500 people at his five health clubs in the
capital. He travels abroad regularly, he says, but adds, "I get homesick right
away."
On his office wall he has hung pictures of himself with Chinese cultural
icons, including the martial-arts actor Jet Li and the film director Zhang
Yimou.
He says his generation feels pride about China's status in the world. But
he thinks the Japanese still look down on Chinese, much as they did 60 years
ago. "The Japan issue is deep in our bones," he says.
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