China: A Monster on the Loose(protest veered off the script; politburo nervous)

Newsweek ^ | 04/25/05 issue | Melinda Liu

[TigerLikesRooster]

A Monster on the Loose

Beijing wanted to shake up Tokyo?but not like this.

China Photos-Getty Images Unrest: Did protests start with the leadership's silent backing?

By Melinda Liu

Newsweek

April 25 issue - If there was a script, this wasn't in it. China's president, Hu Jintao, convened an emergency session of the Politburo's powerful Standing Committee two weekends ago, just hours after anti-Japanese protests in the capital first turned violent. Thousands of marchers had converged on the Japanese Embassy, breaking windows and chanting "Kill the Japanese!" and "Come out, Japanese pigs!" Diplomacy aside, Hu's big worry was the threat of a new Tiananmen-style showdown. A well-informed Chinese source tells NEWSWEEK that in a jittery scene reminiscent of the leadership's 1989 war room, Hu warned against allowing the turmoil to spread. That, he said, would only give dissidents "a pretext to vent their dissatisfaction."

His concern came too late. Unrest erupted in Guangzhou, Shanghai and other cities while police fought to maintain order.

The public outcry was supposedly set off by advance reviews of a revisionist history textbook to be released in Japan this May. (Even Japan's leading teachers' association has denounced the book for its skimpy treatment of Japan's wartime atrocities in Asia.) But in those early stages, at least, it also may have been quietly fanned by the Chinese government. The real conflict is about the future, not the past. It's about two economic giants competing for vital energy reserves.

[bert]

I would think it was disgust and hate.

[expatguy]

*PING*