Posted on 02/20/2005 11:12:09 AM PST by snowsislander
BEIJING, China | Gao Hong, a Chinese scholar on Japan, said he was floored recently when confronted with a veritable outpouring of questions in an online forum about China's relations with its neighbor.
"Over 4,000 questions were posted for me in just two hours," he said.
Many of the questions in the December discussion were tendentious.
"One Internet user asked me why ... we don't just declare war on Japan," he said.
Open hostility among the Chinese, especially the young, toward Japan is apparent in barbed newspaper and TV coverage and conversations with citizens.
Some experts suggest that China's leaders permit the venting of nationalist anger at Japan to divert attention from problems at home, including a widening gap between rich and poor, environmental degradation and the repression of views critical of the Communist Party's 56-year monopoly on power.
Gao, however, said authorities are worried by outbursts against Japan. He blamed jingoistic coverage in the news media - in China and Japan - for drumming up nationalist sentiments.
"The strong anti-Japanese feelings among young people are a headache for the government," said Gao, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. China's leaders "are trying their best to let people scale down their anger."
More than a dozen small-scale protests have taken place outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing in the past two years. Anti-Japan activists report little resistance.
The rape of Nanking, China by the Japanese was as least as barbaric as Hitler's murder of the Jews in Germany.
During World War II the Japanese conquered a lot of China. They allowed their troops to take teen age Chinese girls as sex objects. Often killing the girls after raping them. Jpanaese troops killed Chinese men, Women and Children by the hundreds of thousands. To say that many Chinese hate the Japanese is an understatement.
In 1997 I spent some time in Vancouver B.C. There was a large Chinese population in Vancouver. I looked many times trying to find a Chinese driving a Japanese car. I saw Chinese in American, English, German and Italian cars. I did not see any driving Japanese cars.
I notice the story tries to paint the picture that only young Chinese hate Japanese. I don't think that is the case.
Many of you did not see the Asian Cup of soccer held in China last year. The Chinese came to EVERY GAME the Japanese team went to and booed the Japanese on every occasion. There was even some possible cheating going on during one round of PKs.
Not only that, they intimidated the Japanese fans who were there simply to watch the game. The chinese flipped them the bird, threw objects, and physically intimidated the fans. When the game was over, the Japanese fans were greeted outside by a wall of angry Chinese, until the police broke the situation up.
All of this anger, from the jingoistic education Chinese recieve, will one day come to a boiling point. I predict that if the Chinese economy takes a dive, the Chinese will finally be forced to look inward at the agency the proliferated the lie: the Chinese government. Then perhaps they will remember the only agency that killed and maimed it's own citizens 15 years ago at Tiannemen: the Chinese gov't.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3541380.stm
Every OSCs (Overseas Chinese) I've met here in the states either drives a Benz, BMW, or American SUV if they are affluent, or various American models if they have more modest incomes. Not too many seem to be interested in driving Toyotas.
Don't forget about how the Japanese treated the South Koreans. I remember when Japan officially apologized, not too long ago.
Part of the problem is the Japanese cry over what happened to them, but refuse to acknowledge what they did to everyone else.
They always have these big "Peace Bell" whinefests in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they're mad we put the "Enola Gay" on display.
Have we ever gotten so much as an apology from them for Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, and what they did to American POWS and airmen who were shot down?
At least the Nazis treated most Allied POWS with a modicum of adherence to the Geneva Convention.
You've obviously never been to a Steelers/Browns game, have you?
Hello, stupid Internet user. If you declare war on Japan, Japan will have nuclear weapons about 20 minutes after you declare war.
By the way, they already have some delivery systems.
Japanese engineers are very efficient. I suspect their airforce is just as efficient.
The Japanese are roundly hated in most of Asia. I have close friends who are from Hong Kong and they can barely mention Japan without some sort of negative comment.
I agree. The war's been over for 60 years. Learning about and from it is one thing, continuing to hold a grudge over it is nationalistic nonsense.
Asians tend to be racist...period. Regardless of their race, they tend to hate those who are not their race. It's not just Japan and China.
My own take is that China's government is deliberately inciting this. It takes the hoi polloi's mind away from the repression by their government, and it will be handy when China makes more aggressive moves that impact Japan.
He ended his tirade in tears, saying the Japanese should be rounded up and deported, then stormed out. His wife tearfully apologized, explaining 'war trauma' and she exited. I went over to the poor shocked woman, but before I could say anything she said, "I didn't get to tell him I'm Korean."
It is just human nature for them to suspect the Japanese have not changed. When I moved from Maryland to Texas in the 70's I caught a bit of how Southerners still felt about 'Yankees'. (I know Maryland was not really a Northern state, but they were cowed into serving as Union soldiers).
>>>The same is true in China. The communists have to create a reason for the Chinese people to focus their anger on some distant enemy abroad or else they might turn it on the domestic government that represses them. It's a trick as old as history and every tyranny in history has used it.
Not to mention that Tibet and some Muslim areas of China are getting the exact same treatment Japan dished out 60 years ago.
That is true. I've worked for Japanese and Taiwanese firms and they are unapologetically race superiorists. They will tell you they are superior without batting an eyelash.
This is all relative. My Taiwanese and Thai friends like the Japanese a lot more than Chinese (as in the country of China). They much prefer Japanese because Chinese, especially when vacationing, have a very bad reputation of being very loud, rude, and obnoxious. I know tour guides in Thailand who completely refuse to have Chinese as clients. On the other hand, Japanese tourists are very welcomed.
You can insult the education of mainland China and it is deserved but the hate for Japan by the Chineese is real and ingrained as it is with the Koreans towards the Japaneese.
Stories are still passed down from generation to generation in Asia.
Asians use an age old system of the old hanging by the yuoung to be taken care of after they took care of the younguns. History is known and the rest of Asia remembers the hell Japan put the rest of Asia through.
In years to come when the Chi-coms are the superpower they are destined to become they will take out their revenge on the Imperials of Jpan. It will be as merceliss as when Japan did likewise.
As for Korea, they will pick through the carcass.
Why the hell do you think Japan has stopped its rhetoric against the big bad U.S.? Because they know they are going to need big brother uncle sam/
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