… [T]he Chinese officially claim that 300,000 civilians were killed; this is based on the high estimate international war-crimes tribunals and local courts made after World War II. Meanwhile, many non-Chinese denialists respond that it was simply impossible for 300,000 people to be killed by a small Japanese force in a six-week period. A precise Chinese rebuttal, though, is difficult: The Japanese destroyed records of their actions in the city. Chinese historians have been able to name just 10,311 actual victims of the massacre.

For some, this inability to account for more victims represents much more than just a failure of research, but indicates the Communist Party’s patterned callousness toward human tragedy. In this context, one microblogger in Sichuan province went so far as to invoke the party’s alleged efforts to suppress the names of students killed in poorly built schools that collapsed during the catastrophic 2008 Wenchuan earthquake:

The names of the victims on the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall’s “Wailing Wall” totals 10,311 … Hiroshima announced a total of 253,008 victims of the atomic bomb based on accurate records. But up until today, the list of students killed in the Wenchuan Earthquake remains sensitive.

Ran Yunfei expressed a similar view in a previously featured interview at The New York Review of Books:

Right now the government says 300,000 (were killed) and the Japanese say the number is much lower. Some Japanese even claim it wasn’t a massacre. They say, “Okay, if it was a massacre show us the list of the dead. Where’s your list of 300,000?” The government can’t provide this, not even 10 percent of it. Why? Because Chinese governments don’t value an individual life. It’s true. After 70 years they’ve only accounted for 10,000. That’s because they don’t care about individuals.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, history, Japan relations, Nanjing Massacre, Wenchuan
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The falling out began Monday, when Nagoya’s mayor, Takashi Kawamura, told a visiting delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials from Nanjing that he doubted that Japanese troops had massacred Chinese civilians. Most historians say that at a minimum, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in Nanjing in one of the most infamous atrocities of Japan’s military expansion across Asia in the early 20th century.

The falling out underscored how differing views of history remain a problem in Japan’s ties with the nations that it once conquered. While such denials are common by Japanese conservatives like Mr. Kawamura, they are rarely raised in such a public manner, or directly to Chinese officials. But there is also a widely shared perception in Japan that China’s government plays up the massacre for its own propaganda purposes ….

On Wednesday, Mr. Kawamura remained unrepentant, saying that he did not intend to retract the statement or apologize. He explained that his father had been a solider in Nanjing in 1945, and was treated kindly by city residents, which he said would have been impossible had an atrocity taken place there just eight years earlier.

Kawamura’s comments caused a fierce and immediate reaction in China. From The Wall Street Journal:

“Nanjing should invite Kawamura Takashi to tour the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall,” one user wrote on popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo, where Mr. Kawamura was among the most-discussed topics on Wednesday.

Others, however, directed their ire at Liu Zhiwei, the head of the Nanjing delegation, after Kyodo reported that Mr. Liu shook hands with Mr. Kawamura and didn’t directly challenge his denial of an event often described as Asia’s equivalent to the Holocaust.

“All the ghosts of the Nanjing Massacre are going to come knocking on Liu Zhiwei’s door,” wrote one Weibo user.

A Global Times editorial also focused on the Nanjing delegates’ allegedly ineffectual response. Editor-in-chief Hu Xijin shared it on Twitter:

The provocative remarks of the #Nagoya mayor should be strongly refuted, otherwise, more offensive remarks may follow. globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/…

— Hu Xijin | 胡锡进 (@HuXijinGT) February 22, 2012

The article elaborated, arguing that Chinese officials should discard their “traditional passivity” when their foreign counterparts “press China’s buttons in the wrong way”:

Chinese officials should also believe that in the diplomatic world, there is no fuss that is too big to be caused. It is not a strategy, but a courageous style when China is squeezed on many diplomatic fronts. A relationship with a particular country getting a little better or worse would not impede China’s development. This attitude can prevent major events from erupting from small matters.

Diplomacy means honestly showing what we truly care about. It does not interfere with diplomatic skill.

While attending to those of others, we should also attend to our own feelings. It is a pity that almost all frictions in China’s diplomatic exchanges were first broken by foreign sides. Chinese officials should learn how to use the media to tilt public opinion against the provoker.

Following Kawamura’s insistence on Wednesday that “I don’t have any intentions of retracting my comments or apologizing“, however, Global Times trained its guns on the mayor himself:

We advise China to levy sanctions on Kawamura, for example listing him as an unwelcome person and barring his entry into China. Nagoya can be delisted from the schedule of Chinese tourism groups to Japan. China can also consider reducing economic exchanges with the city.

These are fully reasonable steps. Kawamura directly offended the delegation from Nanjing, the city victimized by the brutal killings in 1937. It is a serious mistake both from a diplomatic and historical perspective. As a result, he has infuriated the whole of Chinese society. Due punishment will appease the Chinese public, which has long thought of the Chinese diplomatic approach as weak ….

Punishing Kawamura is right. We understand the questions raised by a few Japanese rightists on Nanjing Massacre under certain circumstances. But Kawamura, as a politician, has crossed the line. A similar mistake would cost dearly for politicians everywhere. Imagine if a Chinese official applauded the atom bombs dropped on Japan in front of a delegation from Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Could the Japanese accept it?

See also CDT posts on Zhang Yimou’s recent ‘Flowers of War’, set in 1937 Nanjing, and on a 2010 joint Sino-Japanese report which marked a degree of convergence between official historical accounts of the massacre.

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Post tags: diplomacy, Global Times, history, Japan relations, Nanjing, Nanjing Massacre, nationalism, rape of nanking
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China said on Monday it had complained to Tokyo about Japanese fishing boats near disputed islands in the East China Sea, while Japan urged talks on the row and voiced concern about its neighbour’s maritime activities.

The latest flare-up in the sea row happened while Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto visited Beijing for talks about the intense but often icy ties between Asia’s top two economies. (For more on ties, click )

It was a reminder that, despite gestures of goodwill between Beijing and Tokyo, the East China Sea remains a source of persistent tension over territorial claims and access to potentially lucrative energy reserves.

See from Xinhua, “China demands immediate withdrawal of Japanese fishing boats from Diaoyu Islands’ waters” and an article from Global Post.

Read more about the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea via CDT.

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Post tags: diaoyu islands, Japan relations, maritime boundaries, South China Sea
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Mr. Chen’s sudden generosity towards a country that once occupied parts of China has some Chinese netizens up in arms. “Chen Guangbiao’s head must have been kicked by a donkey, he’s such a national scum,” one netizen writing under the name jznhys said on China’s microblogging site NetEase Weibo. “With that money, he could have donated to poor students in rural China. What’s the point of rushing to show off in Japan?”

Another netizen on NetEase wrote: “Chen Guangbiao, did you forget all about how the Japanese invaded our ancestors？You should really be sent to a mad house.”

(For more on Chen’s expedition, see this post.)

On Sina Weibo, however, most appear impressed by the Japanese, according to World of Chinese’s daily listing of trending topics. A guest post at the Jottings from the Granite Studio blog tells a similar story while examining the “complex feelings” of Chinese people toward Japan:

It seems that Chinese government has decided to put historic conflict and recent territorial disputes aside for a time, show its humanity, and return the favor of Japan’s help during the Wenchuan earthquake three years ago.

However, China’s public opinion doesn’t always match the government’s magnanimity, and there is a debate, online and off, about how China should react to the news of Japan’s disaster. There are those who say Japan got what it deserved and cite the atrocities committed against China in World War II, and saw the earthquake as something to be celebrated, but most people feel that at this moment of great tragedy, we should put history aside and reach out to the Japanese people.

Even though the anti-Japanese opinion often makes the loudest noise online and the best story (as in the demonstrations against Japan in 2005) I am glad to see most people taking a different and more compassionate view. But I am also not surprised that this debate occurs in China today, we have such complicated feelings and opinions regarding Japan.

(A companion post gives an account of the historical background to the two countries’ tense relationship.)

Much of the online reaction has been marked by introspection, a trend whose emergence was noted late last week by a Foreign Policy article featured in an earlier post on CDT. A collection of netizen reactions at Ministry of Tofu includes several comments focusing on the contrast between the aftermaths of the Sendai and Yunnan earthquakes:

Two pictures speak louder than words. One shows a rescue soldier in Yingjiang’s quake zone playing computer game on his laptop. The other shows rescue soldiers plant banners bearing names of government organs on rubble and pose for the photo. A net user commented, “It’s rescue effort with Chinese characteristics.”

A Chinese microblogger named “慕容嗷嗷”(Murong Aoao) wrote, “Yunnan people, please hold on. You gotta believe in yourselves. Japanese people, please hold on. You gotta believe in your country.”

Another who goes by the name “这货有意思”(Thestuffis_cool) wrote, “Weird. Why don’t Japanese media broadcast videos of cadres inspecting the scenes? Why don’t they invite experts to dismiss ‘rumors’? Why don’t anchors play the impassioning trick? Why don’t reporters at the scene grab the family of the victim and ask ‘who do you thank first now that you’ve survived?’”

Similar contrasts were marked in an article from Chinese Elections and Governance, translated by China Media Project:

It must be said that maintaining social order in the midst of such chaos is a miracle, but the conduct of the Japanese is enough to make one believe in miracles. In a piece called, “A First-Hand Experience of the Japan Quake,” written for FT Chinese, Zhang Lei (张磊), a special assistant to the CEO of China’s Hanwang Technology, wrote that just 10 seconds after the quake occurred: “There was no other programming on any of Japan’s television channels, everything was about the quake, and the scenes being broadcast were staggering. I wondered: Was Japan’s government not afraid that it would cause instability for them to report the quake on the TV without fear like this? But in the TV reports on the quake, you rarely saw pictures of high-level Japanese leaders ‘dealing with the disaster’, and there seemed to be no images of the Japanese Prime Minister directing the relief effort, spilling his tears over the disaster-stricken area.”

In the face of major disaster, what we have seen is that the Japanese people are well-trained, calm and deliberate. The country has not descended into chaos or alarm, but instead has, just as ever, shown the world a face of calm order, solidarity and mutual assistance.

Unfavourable comparisons have also been drawn between the resilience of Japan’s infrastructure and the fragility of buildings in Yunnan, which recalls the devastating collapse of poorly built schools during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Others have remarked the difference between reactions in each country to disasters in the other: as a Sina Weibo poster cited in the above-mentioned Foreign Policy article asked, “How many Japanese would write, ‘Congratulations on the Wenchuan earthquake?’” Still others marvel at photographs of Japanese calmly queueing to use public telephone booths, and bemoan the very different behaviour they would expect from their own countrymen. From chinaSMACK:

红肚铅笔:

In China, I bet [people] would have immediately broken into and looted the surrounding convenience stores/supermarkets.

午夜阳光888:

This kind of character, is worthy of people’s respect.

aaron1120:

In Japan, the cars yield to the people. In China, the cars can’t wait to run over your body, even if you have the green light and the car is making a turn.

sinki820:

Without bringing up anything else, on the character exhibited when fasting disaster, we really can’t compare.

Even when there is no disaster, for simply sitting in a seat or using the toilet, we’re capable of fighting and arguing over.

annetta: (responding to sbh09)

After another 50 years, [we] still wouldn’t have caught up.

专门注册马甲:

Nothing to be said~ It can only be said that this kind of moment only reveals their character even further~ This isn’t something that can be obtained through GDP alone~

(See also this earlier post on chinaSMACK)

At the same time, however, there has been plain sympathy. Videos have been posted online of residents of Sichuan, the scene of the devastating 2008 earthquake, offering encouragement for those affected in Japan, saying, “日本加油!” “Go Japan!”

Tibetan residents:

Middle School students in Wenchuan, Sichuan:

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Post tags: disaster relief, Japan earthquake 2011, Japan relations, sinaweibo, video
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Chen Guangbiao, a 42-year-old billionaire and chief executive of recycling company Jiangsu Huangpu Renewable Resources, headed to Japan Friday to personally donate rescue supplies and 13 million yen (US$158,820) to the country’s earthquake and tsunami victims, according to the Yangtze Evening News (in Chinese).

With four vans draped in Chinese national flags and wearing a suit decorated with Chinese flag stickers, Mr. Chen distributed food, water, sanitary goods, blankets and “good wishes from Chinese people” to shelters in the northeastern Japanese prefectures of Chiba, Ibaraki and Fukushima, the report said. He personally pulled three people from destroyed homes, the report said without elaborating further ….

Besides delivering supplies, Mr. Chen contributed an estimated 2 million yen to street-side money boxes. “I also put my name card in the box to let them know the donor is a Chinese, an ordinary Chinese man who wants to help,” the newspaper cited Mr. Chen as saying.

Mr. Chen’s sudden generosity towards a country that once occupied parts of China has some Chinese netizens up in arms. “Chen Guangbiao’s head must have been kicked by a donkey, he’s such a national scum,” one netizen writing under the name jznhys said on China’s microblogging site NetEase Weibo. “With that money, he could have donated to poor students in rural China. What’s the point of rushing to show off in Japan?”

Part of the point may lie, literally, in the debris carpeting the stricken areas. From a Beijing Review feature on Chen (via Adam Minter):

In 2003, an old stadium in Nanjing was to be demolished and he was invited to get involved. The job needed to be finished in one month and he would be paid no money. So he had the idea that he could sell the used iron which might make a profit. He decided to give it a try. Finally he sold the used iron alone for 4 million yuan ($588,200) and earned 1.85 million yuan ($272,000).

Chen found a viable and profitable way to recycle the waste. So he next decided to focus his efforts on the industry and established a recycling company called Jiangsu Huangpu Renewable Resources Co. Ltd. Beside the iron that could be sold to iron and steel companies, the cement block could be recycled into concrete after it was mixed with water, cement and sand, he said. And with different additives, all the construction waste could be made into at least seven types of building material, such as landfill, red brick and building blocks ….

Chen’s company has changed China’s demolition industry. Just a few years ago, the construction owner was forced to pay around 10 yuan ($1.47) per square meter to tear down a structure, but now the demolition companies spare no effort in winning projects on which they charge no fee.

Over the years, he has found that almost all the waste can be turned into profit, including old tires, disposable infusion bags and plastic needle tubes that can be made into synthetic-rubber tracks and tires for agricultural use. Household appliances and machinery can also be disassembled and recycled.

Humanitarian motives should, of course, not be discounted; as the China Real Time Report post notes, Chen has also offered a posthumous $105 million donation to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s “Giving Pledge”.

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Post tags: billionaires, disaster relief, Japan earthquake 2011, Japan relations
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China has acted fast, sending disaster relief and organizing the evacuation of its own citizens from the disaster zone. This disaster also has caused some Chinese to view Japan through fresh eyes.

China’s 15-person search-and-rescue team was dispatched speedily to the Japanese quake zone. This was in part to reciprocate the help given by a Japanese military team that aided China after its own massive earthquake in Sichuan three years ago. As the first Japanese troops in China since the end of the brutal Japanese occupation, their presence was politically charged.

When China’s Premier Wen Jiabao gave his annual press conference Monday, it was hard not to wonder whether troubled bilateral ties were the reason it took him 2 1/2 hours to get around to expressing his condolences.

“I want to use today’s opportunity to extend our deep condolences over the lost lives in this disaster and express our sincere sympathy to the Japanese people,” he said, just before winding up. “China is also a country that is prone to earthquake disasters, and we fully empathize with how Japanese feel now.”

China is stepping up. It’s sending $4.5 million worth of rescue materials, including blankets and flashlights. Beijing has promised more, if necessary.

From China Real Time Report:

Shortly after Mr. Wen spoke, the state-run Xinhua new agency quoted China’s Ministry of Commerce as saying Beijing planned to provide roughly $4.6 million in humanitarian assistance to support disaster relief efforts in Japan. The report noted that a 15-member Chinese rescue team had arrived in Japan on Sunday and said an initial shipment of blankets, tents, emergency lights and other relief materials will be sent to Japan from Shanghai. A team of 30 doctors, nurses and radiation control experts has also been assembled and is ready to be dispatched to Japan if needed, Xinhua said.

Reuters has compiled a list of contributions from around 70 countries, according to which China’s Health Minister has pledged “whatever medical aid is needed at a moment’s notice”. The Defence Ministry, meanwhile, has offered relief materials and “medical, rescue, or disease prevention teams or a hospital ship”, according to Xinhua. The state news agency has adopted an unusually fraternal tone in the wake of the disaster:

Many Chinese still remember that after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck China’s Sichuan province in 2008, Japanese rescuers offered valuable help, ordinary Japanese people lined up to make donations, and even some mayors and municipal legislators took to the streets to solicit contributions.

The willingness and readiness to help each other is just a natural reflection of the time-honored friendly bond between the two neighboring Oriental civilizations. The virtue of returning the favor after receiving one runs in the bloods of both nations.

Among the immediate recipients of Chinese aid are Chinese nationals in the affected areas who, according to Voice of America, are being evacuated by bus:

Thousands of Chinese are reported to be stranded in tsunami and quake hit areas of Japan that are also facing a radiation threat, and China has become the first country to order a mass evacuation of its nationals from the country. The meltdown fear at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has also put the spotlight on China’s expanding nuclear power program.

China says it will evacuate its citizens from areas worst affected by Japan’s earthquake and subsequent damage to nuclear reactors.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu says the Chinese embassy in Tokyo is arranging buses to carry Chinese out of the affected areas also threatened with a radiation leak.

This urgency in rushing Chinese citizens to safety echoes the recent evacuation from Libya, as the government again attempts to display the willingness and ability to protect its people upon which its legitimacy has come to rest.

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Post tags: disaster relief, Japan earthquake 2011, Japan relations
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The comments came after China announced plans early Friday to increase its defense budget by 13% this year and as the week’s clashes built on concerns that China will increasingly use its escalating military power to assert its territorial claims in the region

Such fears have prompted many of its neighbors to to shore up defense ties with the U.S. and beef up their own militaries, threatening to push Asia into a new arms race.

China expects to spend 601.1 billion yuan ($91.4 billion) on defense in 2011, up from 533.4 billion yuan last year, Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the National People’s Congress, told a news conference ahead of the start of the legislature’s annual session on Saturday.

The projected rise is faster than last year’s 7.5% increase—the slowest clip in decades—but is significantly slower than the roughly 19% annual growth in years before 2010.

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Post tags: Japan relations, military buildup, npc 2011
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There is no question but that the Japanese government lost face by “giving in” to Chinese pressure and releasing Captain Zhan. But the incident also helped boost important agendas, notably concerning Japan’s relationship with the US, the Okinawa “base relocation” problem, and future military posture.

By attaching = immediate priority to extracting an American promise to “protect” the Senkakus, Prime Minister Kan Naoto’s government showed its determination to continue Japan’s “Client State” status.37 The initiatives of Kan’s predecessor, Hatoyama Yukio, for closer Japan-China cooperation in the formation of an East Asian Community, became a thing of the past. Instead, Kan used the events to precipitate closer integration of Japanese and US military planning and operations in the Western Pacific and East Asia, and to cooperate in grand regional war games that were plainly intended to intimidate China.

Read more about the fishing boat incident via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diaoyu islands, Japan relations
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For a leadership that sailed through the global financial crisis with nary a misstep, the Chinese have proved surprisingly inept at diplomacy. Beijing’s assertive — critics say thuggish — behavior in the international arena has undermined an image it had long cultivated as a gentle giant whose prosperity would only enrich its neighbors.

Carefully nurtured relations with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and many European countries have seemed in danger of unraveling with alarming speed.

“We need to do some repair work,” said Shen Dingli, an international relations specialist at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “China has to be humble and courteous about appreciating America’s help in its development and should not use rising power to make friends upset.”

Among the many sore points are Beijing’s manipulation of its currency to give its exports an edge over those of its trading partners’, and its seemingly unconditional support of North Korea, particularly after the Nov. 23 shelling of a South Korean island in which four people died.

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Post tags: diplomacy, Japan relations, South Korea relations, U.S. relations
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Japanese trade and industry minister Akihiro Ohata said Wednesday that two ships containing the minerals had left China for Japan.

Importers in Japan say shipments have been halted since September, held up in Chinese ports by increased inspections and paperwork. The export ban began after Japan arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain after his ship collided with patrol boats near disputed islands.

China currently produces 97 percent of the global supply of rare earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacturing of high-tech products such as cell phones, computer drives and hybrid cars.

Beijing has denied banning the exports.

See also an Al Jazeera report which explains what rare earth elements are and how the U.S. is trying to compete with China’s monopoly over the industry:

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Post tags: exports, Japan relations, rare earth elements
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