China:Beijing blacks out anti-Japan protests(fear of genie called national outrage)

Asia Times ^ | 04/13/05 | Antoaneta Bezlova

[TigerLikesRooster]

Beijing blacks out anti-Japan protests

By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - As anti-Japanese protests continued for a third day in a row Tuesday, government censors imposed a news blackout on coverage of protests, signaling that Beijing was trying to contain further damage to already strained Sino-Japanese relations.

None of the nation's thousands of newspapers, television stations and news websites carried any details of the protests that took the capital by storm on Saturday. On Sunday, hundreds of full-gear riot police blocked access to the diplomatic quarter in downtown Beijing, but avoided direct confrontation with protesters. In sharp contrast with the full blast of anti-Japanese propaganda a few weeks ago when national media covered extensively China's grassroots campaign to block Japan's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, this time they avoided any mention of the riots that had spread over China.

In a country where little public expression of political sentiment is tolerated, the magnitude and continuity of anti-Japan marches were seen by many as an indication of real antipathy at the top towards Japan's emerging military profile in the region and its ambitions to join the Security Council.

But with strong interest in maintaining the economic integration between the two countries, Beijing appears unprepared, for the time being, to exchange icy diplomatic relations for direct conflict. The news blackout came as Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi protested Monday against the damage inflicted by the riots and warned that relations between the two Asian powers had hit a new low.

"It is very regrettable. This kind of thing must not be allowed to happen," Koizumi said of the damage caused by the protesters. "China is responsible for the safety of Japanese people who are working in China. I would like them to be well aware of this."

Koizumi's top spokesman said Monday Tokyo was seriously concerned by the demonstrations. "We are deeply troubled by the recent developments," chief cabinet secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. "We are next-door neighbors and our diplomatic relations are extremely important. We should not let misunderstandings grow."

In recent weeks the two countries have crossed swords on political and economic issues, such as Tokyo's decision to discontinue economic aid to Beijing, competition for energy supplies and China's grassroots opposition towards Japan's bid to for a permanent seat on the Security Council.

Chinese anger focuses on the visits of Koizumi and other Japanese leaders to the Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals are commemorated alongside Japan's war dead. China says this proves Japan has not truly repented for its militarist World War II past. Beijing refuses to hold bilateral summits with Koizumi until he stops the pilgrimages.

But Japan says China has wantonly downplayed generous packages of aid it has received from Japan - some 3,000 billion yen (US$27 billion) since 1980, and is stoking anti-Japanese nationalist sentiment as ways of boosting its fading ideological authority.

Saturday's protest was the largest Beijing had seen since 1999, when angry crowds pelted the US Embassy following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the Kosovo campaign.

Some 10,000 people - mostly students, marched across Beijing in protest against Japan's approval of revised history textbooks that critics say whitewash Japan's brutal wartime colonization of Asian nations. Later, some 1,000 people besieged the Japanese diplomatic compound, throwing rocks and eggs and shouting, "Japanese pigs come out" and "stop distorting history".

Sunday and Monday saw more marches in Beijing and rallies of support in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, where protesters called for the boycott of Japanese goods and threw eggs at Japanese restaurants. In Shanghai, two Japanese students were beaten up in a bar.

A survey released Monday found that 96% of Chinese saw Japan's revision of history textbooks as an "insult to the Chinese people". Ninety-seven percent of those surveyed by the Social Survey Institute of China demanded an apology from Tokyo.

"Japan is the outmost target of nationalistic sentiment in China," said Victor Yuan, who runs a semi-official company conducting public surveys and marketing research in Beijing. Increasingly, he said, the outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiment could also have commercial implications.

"Our probes show that among people who had never before used Japanese goods, some 24% now say they would boycott Japanese products. The figure last year was only 10%," he said.

A trade association for Chinese chain stores called last week for a boycott of beer, coffee, cars and other products made by Japanese companies like Asahi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which it claims supported the controversial textbook revision.

Some 14,000 Japanese companies are estimated to be operating in China and continuing hostilities could have chilling ramifications for bilateral ties. Economic ties so far have been the only stabilizing factor in relations across the East China Sea. In 2004, Sino-Japanese trade grew to $168 billion, a 26% jump from a year earlier.

Many in Beijing expressed anger at the news blackout of the anti-Japanese protests.

"Our government is too weak," grumbled Yang Xiaodong, a 40-something Beijinger who described himself as self-employed. "They should keep the media blasting for a week, or even for two weeks, until everybody in China and the whole word takes notice." But Chinese leaders may fear, too, that continuous anti-Japan demonstrations could trigger protests about broader social grievances, speculated a university professor who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Just two months ago, Chinese communist leaders refused to let people come out and publicly commemorate the late Zhao Ziyang [the purged party leader who sympathized with the 1989 Tiananmen student demonstrators]. They know that wound is still fresh and could easily open," the professor said. '. "They don't want protests to turn against them."

[TigerLikesRooster]

Chinese regime stoked the fire of national outrage. Now it is suddenly concerned that the the outrage will boil over ans spill into a different target, that is, itself.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Raging out of control? Ping!

[GOP_1900AD]

Sodden thought - could this be setting the stage for a coup d'etat, wherein the PLA assume full control of the Politburo and the Council of Peoples' Deputies? Military rule of Beijing would be a sure sign of worse things yet to come.

[skeeter]

Now it is suddenly concerned that the the outrage will boil over ans spill into a different target, that is, itself.

As long as its just students in the streets, the Chicoms know things are well under control. When Joe Sixpack starts showing up at these demontrations, the leadership starts worrying.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #3

Well, if communist rule is in danger, that can certainly happen. However, I don't think China is in that stage yet.

[DTogo]

In a country where little public expression of political sentiment is tolerated, the magnitude and continuity of anti-Japan marches were seen by many as an indication of real antipathy at the top towards Japan's emerging military profile in the region and its ambitions to join the Security Council.

Antipathy? That's an understatement!

"Mata konna kudaranai kuso janai..." : "Not this stupid sh#t again..." Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[hillary's_fat_a**]

And in our other news of the day, in Chinese-annexed Tibet ...

[hedgetrimmer]

FYI
***
UN aide says China-Japan tensions could derail UN reforms

The current tensions between Japan and China could derail plans to reform the United Nations Security Council, a senior UN official said in remarks published by the Financial Times.


Mark Malloch Brown, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's chief of staff, said the tensions were indicative of the extreme sensitivity of the plan to enlarge the Security Council.


The tensions "are indicative of a core uneasiness about .. an enlargement that creates an even more entrenched group of big states with no accountability to their regions," Malloch Brown told the newspaper.


He said it was up to Japan, Germany and India -- three of the major powers seeking permanent membership of the Security Council -- to reassure their neighbours.


"Germany and Japan and India really need to listen to their regions and give their regions an assurance that they are not going to use their membership to settle old scores within the region but to genuinely accept a sense of accountability for their region," he said.


Malloch Brown's comments follow mass streets protests in China over the weekend targeting Japanese interests, which on occasion turned violent.


The protests were triggered by Japan's approval of a new history textbook that China says whitewashes Japanese wartime atrocities, but among the demonstrators' demands was for Tokyo to be denied a Security Council seat.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050413/wl_afp/unreformchinajapanindia_050413054834

[BJungNan]

As anti-Japanese protests continued for a third day in a row Tuesday, government censors imposed a news blackout on coverage of protests, signaling that Beijing was trying to contain further damage to already strained Sino-Japanese relations.

No, not quite right. They are trying to squelch organized protest. They are definately worried about how this recent protest was organized and who my be the subject of a future similarly organized protest (themselves).

I predict a clamp down that is much more than the news blackout reported here.

[hedgetrimmer]

More conflict brewing:
***
Japan Snubs China on Gas, History Feud Simmers

Japan began allocating rights for gas exploration in a disputed area of the East China Sea on Wednesday, a move likely to rile China at a time when ties are at rock-bottom levels in a dispute over Japan's wartime past.


A senior Chinese official, calling the energy dispute one of the main problems plaguing Sino-Japanese relations, had warned Tokyo a day earlier not to award the test drilling rights and said doing so would "fundamentally change the issue."


Simmering tensions between the two Asian giants over a range of topics, especially what China sees as Japan's failure to own up to wartime atrocities, erupted in China at the weekend, with thousands of people taking part in protests that turned violent.


Some concerns have arisen about a Japanese backlash. In Tokyo on Wednesday, members of a right-wing group shouted slogans at the Chinese embassy, where security has been tightened, and dragged Chinese flags behind two vans, a witness said.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050413/wl_nm/northasia_dc_6

[hedgetrimmer]

Chinese protestors chant anti-Japanese slogans as they march in Beijing's Haidian district in this April 9, 2005 file photo. More than 6,000 Chinese protesters held a rally Saturday demanding a boycott of Japanese goods to oppose new textbooks that critics say gloss over Tokyo's wartime atrocities. China is criticizing Japan for new textbooks that critics say downplay wartime abuses such as its sexual slavery of Asian women. But Beijing's own schoolbooks are marked by significant omissions about the communist system's history and relations with its neighbors. Experts say China's textbooks are written to heighten a sense of national victimhood and glorify the Communist Party that seized power in a 1949 revolution and lashes out at any threat to its rule. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File)

[hedgetrimmer]

Experts say China's textbooks are written to heighten a sense of national victimhood and glorify the Communist Party that seized power in a 1949 revolution and lashes out at any threat to its rule. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, FILE)

[hedgetrimmer]

This July 20004 file photo shows Chinese-operated gas exploration facilities stationed in the East China Sea near an area which Japan claims as its exclusive economic zone, on which the two countries are at odds. REUTERS/Kyodo

[hedgetrimmer]

A defaced portrait of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi with Chinese characters 'Ashame' is left at the entrance to the Japanese consulate in Hong Kong after an anti-Japan protest April 13, 2005. China's refusal to apologise for violence during anti-Japanese protests may tarnish its image at a time when Beijing is seeking a bigger global role to match its economic might, analysts said on Wednesday. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #11

You know that Hong Kong activists would have their rally this weekend. It is possible that they use anti-Japanese rally as another avenue to consolidate their political strength.

[Brian Allen]

TRANSLATION:

[Peking's] censors [Supressed] coverage of "protests" .....

None of the [State propaganda media] carried any details of "the protests" [Staged by and in Peking] on Saturday.

On Sunday, hundreds of [The casual slaughterers of babies, students, meditation-circle-jerkers and every-other-kind-of innocent] blocked access to the diplomatic quarter in downtown Peking, but avoided direct confrontation with [The state's brownshirts.]

In sharp contrast with the full blast of anti-Japanese propaganda a few weeks ago when [Propaganda promulgators promulgated] "news" of "china's" [Staged "protests"] to block Japan's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, this time they avoided any mention of the riots that had spread over China.

In a [Slave state] in which [Supression of political express is absolute ............. ]

Etceteras.

[dmartin]

China's grassroots opposition towards Japan's bid to for a permanent seat on the Security Council

It is not enough that the Chinese government issues this drivel, we need other media outlets to repeat it.

[Brian Allen]

<< And in our other news of the day, in Chinese-annexed Tibet ... >>

... and in the rest of the 2.5 million square miles [Out of 3.7-million, total] of other peoples' land invaded, colonized and enslaved by the gang that calls itself "china" ............

[Trimegistus]

The thing is, both sides are being equally repellent. The Japanese really do whitewash their WWII crimes, and the Chinese really are using this to distract their people from a corrupt one-party system.

This is one case where the US should just keep mum.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #19

Yeah, to the third party, this is what they call "pot calling kettle black."