Chinese Mobs Vs Japan! Fight!

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19609945

Angry protesters have staged sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in cities across China, amid escalating tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

In Beijing, protesters threw stones and bottles and tried to breach a barricade manned by riot police.

There were reports of protests in at least 11 other cities.


I think the BBC is downplaying just how bad the situation is. Japanese sources (unsurprisingly) have been more willing to show Chinese mobs going on looting sprees. Such as here: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/world/news/20120915-OYT1T00813.htm  Though to be fair looting department stores seems more like the Chinese taking cues from the British of a few years ago by taking political protests as a chance to smash and steal things.

On the other hand, setting Japanese factories on fire and attacking Japanese people on the street seems to be just good old fashioned nationalistic hate. Of course it's worth nothing that the Chinese government is being remarkably slow to roll out the tanks. And some cynical souls have even suggested they're not doing that to give the public someone to vent their anger on besides the government in the face of upcoming elections. Elections where I'm sure China's dispute with Japan won't be mentioned at all.

So there you go, folks. The Chinese government is happy to stand by and let people riot and loot in the streets just to make an election easier. And you thought attack ads were bad.

Comments

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Japan is not nearly as reviled as Germany either, despite doing a few things to their prisoners that at least matches Germany as far as nastiness goes, without perhaps the numbers Germany has.

It's a hard thing to judge, does not being as bad as the other make one any better?

[di-glossia.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that. Though some of that may have to do with the fact that popular culture and media has made at least Americans (especially interesting as the Americans were attacked by the Japanese and fought against all three belligerents on their home turfs) fully aware that they fought a war against the Germans and that the NSDAP committed horrible atrocities against, among others, the Jewish people but largely glosses over the war in the Pacific and mostly focuses on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Japan is mentioned in light of WWII. Of course, the Americans did horrible things, but it's very interesting that Nazis have become a symbol of evil in the US and not the Empire of Japan or the Italian Social Republic.

Certainly not but the world is overly focused on actions that occured seventy years ago. It would be better to admit it was all a horrible affair, learn from it, and not continue to guilt countries whose populations are largely too young to have had any part in it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Again, Dugout Doug executed only the Japanese generals that beat him or psychologically and militarily schooled his sorry ass in the war and let most of the most monstrous Japanese war criminals go free. It's worth noting that the USA also neglects even the UK's role in WWII, let alone the USSR's, admittedly in the latter case due to the dilemma that militarily only one Ally learned how to actually fight land battles, and it was the Soviet Union and this creating all manner of propaganda issues best served by omitting it altogether and relying on the self-serving lies of Germany's generals.

Italy, of course, had a joke army and its role in WWII in general is neglected by Allied historians despite that fighting there lasted up to V-E Day, including a civil war, some of the largest-scale German barbarities outside of Eastern/Central Europe, and the WWII version of the Western Front of WWI. That the Soviets, despite equally gruesome individual battles cleared a region the size of France when the Allies were stopped cold by Kesselring in the Monte Cassino region had more than a little to do with this in terms of the actual picture of WWII for the same reasons mentioned above.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Blame Dugout Doug for that one.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Japan is not nearly as reviled among folks who speak English as Germany. Fixed that for you.

There isn't much animosity against the Germans here in China, but, well, check out the OP. When the Greeks might dress up Mrs. Merkel as a Nazi in effigy, they symbolism makes for easily understood stories in the West. It takes a riot for the Chinese to make the news. I’m surprised by how relevant the Japanese crimes from WWII are to today’s relations. Remember a couple of years ago when the circle in the Shanghai World Trade Center needed to change to a trapezoid because a circle in a Japanese building was a symbol of imperialism? Every year the Japanese leaders either visit or don’t visit the Yasukuni Shrine, either way, it makes the news. Beijing has an Anti-Japanese Museum, a 100,000 square foot museum dedicated to the atrocities committed by the Japanese during WWII. This was opened 50 years after the beginning of hostilities, just in case you’re thinking such sentiments have waned over time.

It’s an easy appeal to populism, there aren’t any pro-Japanese folks here and it’s not like the Japanese can defend their history of aggression.