In a crisis, many Chinese people simply don’t have faith in the government, so they listen to rumors and take actions they believe will protect them and their family.
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In a crisis, many Chinese people simply don’t have faith in the government, so they listen to rumors and take actions they believe will protect them and their family. The roots of modern day attitudes toward Japan in China have roots dating back over a century, characterized by a mix of envy and antipathy. (A Guest post by Yajun) Over the last four days, CCTV has had comprehensive coverage of the massive earthquake which struck Japan last week. Despite the ongoing NPC and CPPCC meetings China, CCTV still filled more than half of its morning news time with the latest information from Japan. Chinese leaders and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed China’s sympathy to its neighbor immediately after the earthquake, and a Chinese rescue team arrived in the disaster zone over the weekend to assist their Japanese counterparts in the relief and rescue efforts. 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 Today being a beautiful day in the ‘jing, I thought of nothing better than a long hutong ramble, a bit of urban hiking if you will. We started at Xinjiekou, wormed our way through the Sihuan wet market, around Houhai,* down Gulou Dongdajie (stopping for burritos at Amigos), and then south along Jiaodaokou to the National Museum of Art, and then further south still…and that’s where our springtime stroll turned interesting. I had — perhaps naively — assumed that since no protests materialized last Sunday, and the overwhelming security response had brought so much attention to a non-issue, that this Sunday would be comparatively mellow. A few cops, some red armbands, but mostly just NPC bullshit and nothing like the street sweepers and broom beaters of last Sunday’s debacle on Wangfujing. Yep, I was wrong. We made it past the first checkpoint, just north of the cathedral, by putting on the ‘dumb laowai’ act. Since most cops assume foreigners are idiots anyway, this ruse is not too hard to pull off. After a few “We don’t know anything we just want to look at the church, Mr. Police Officer” lines, we were through…only to be stopped just north of the There are days when the state media in China just can’t help drunkenly staggering along that fine line between “self” and “self parody.” Few events from the 19th century have such a grip on Chinese indignation as the Opium Wars of 1840-1842. In PRC historiography, the unequal treaties forced upon the Qing government at the end of the war mark both the start of the modern era and a “century of humiliation.” Patriotic education, media, and movies reinforce this emotionally charged linkage of drugs, violence, and forced submission in the collective consciousness Most recently, British protests over the 2009 execution of Akmal Shaikh, a Briton convicted of smuggling drugs into China, sparked a strong backlash with few commentators failing to take up the flag of resistance against a modern opium war. Last Friday, the People’s Daily Online edition (中文) brought opium into the digital age. CMP provides this translation: In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the British East India Company, through the monopolization of trade, the sale of opium and open plunder, accomplished great works for England in its development of an “empire on which the sun never sets.” Marx once said concerning the British East India |
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