A middle school literature exam in Chengdu has triggered the latest outburst of anti-Japanese nationalism. Students were asked to analyze an excerpt from “Fallen Azaleas,” an amateurish piece of fiction by the virtually unknown...
The nationalist blogger who attempted to sue Nobel-Prize winning author Mo Yan for 1.5 billion yuan for allegedly “defaming heroes and martyrs” in his fiction has had his lawsuit rejected by the Beijing Procuratorate, on the...
In recent weeks, both the Nobel prize-winning novelist Mo Yan and the Chinese bottled water company Nongfu Spring have come under fire from extreme Chinese nationalists, who have accused them of being insufficiently patriotic....
Margaret Hillenbrand, professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford, joined CDT to discuss her two latest books: “On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China” (2023) and “Negative Exposures: Knowing...
This month, there have been a number of incidents—some major and some minor—that illustrate the “U-lock” mentality, a phrase that is sometimes used as shorthand to describe vitriolic xenophobic (particularly anti-Japanese)...
Open displays of rejoicing and Schadenfreude on Chinese social media after a destructive magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck western Japan on New Year’s Day have been followed by two new (and far sillier) incidents of xenophobic or...
“Rejoicing over a disaster (or mocking or insulting the victims of disaster) in this way makes the citizens of this great nation infinitely less civilized.” – From an essay by WeChat blogger 江湖挑灯看剑 (Jiānghú tiǎo dēng kàn jiàn),...
Chinese debate over Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has thus far been characterized by disinformation, nationalism, and heavy online censorship. This in turn has fueled fear...
Two years and four months after whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang’s death from COVID-19, the “Wailing Wall” that emerged in the comments under his last Weibo post continues to serve as a repository for the hopes, dreams, worries,...
After a photo of memorial tablets for Japanese war criminals in Nanjing’s Xuanzang Temple went viral, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs ordered religious groups across the country to conduct self-inspections and...
At the New York Times’ Sinosphere blog, China correspondent Edward Wong reflects on his...
Amid a flare in the ongoing island dispute that has proven to be a notable bout of tension in long-strained Sino-Japanese relations, Japan has unveiled the Izumo, its largest military vessel since World War II. AP reports: Japan...
A video on Al Jazeera features Japan’s move to rename and strengthen its self-defense force. Tomohiko Taniguchi, a Councillor in Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat, emphasizes in the video that Japan has vowed not to repeat...
From Reuters: China was strongly critical on Saturday of an essay by a Japanese air force chief of staff who said Japan was not an aggressor in Asia in World War Two and was later dismissed for airing those views. “We are...
From Japan Focus: Abstract: This article explores how and why history and archaeology have been mobilised and utilised in nationalist projects in East Asia, especially in the case of the Koguryo dispute between Korea and China. Koguryo (Korean)/Gaogouli (Chinese), an ancient kingdom in the period between 37 BC and AD 668, encompassed a vast area […]
From The South China Morning Post, via A Glimpse of the World: The doctoring of Japanese school textbooks to omit negative portrayals of its wartime conduct has provoked an outcry in East Asia, but one doesn’t have to look far to discover that every nation has its own version of history. It also becomes evident […]
From The Times Online: A BLOB of “wrongly” coloured ink, a controversial map of Asia and the seizure of 128 civics textbooks have plunged Japan and China into another round of bitterness and mutual distrust. The latest incident in the troubled relationship between the two neighbours flared up yesterday when it emerged that books on […]
From The LA Times: When Li Xuanyao, a student at Beijing’s No. 55 Middle School, wants to learn about the Great Leap Forward, she has her work cut out for her. Mao Tse-tung’s disastrous 1950s policy, which saw 30 million Chinese die of starvation, is relegated to a few paragraphs in her 163-page history textbook. […]
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