Your mother was a panda and your father smelled of gooseberries!
After those protests in Paris, the fury of the Chinese blogosphere appears to have been turned full force on the government and citizens of the French Republic. There've been a good number of calls for a boycott of Carrefour, the gigantic France-based supermarket chain that's all over China (and, not incidentally, employs quite a lot of Chinese people). And an unconfirmed post on an online message board may be evidence of the fact that silly, histrionic nationalism is a worldwide phenomenon. Apparently, earlier today, there was a small protest (quickly broken up by police - even a nationalist demonstration is still a demonstration) in front of a bakery/cafe down the street from me called "Tous les Jours".
Only problem? Tous les Jours, like most of the "French-style" bakery/cafes in this area (see also Paris Baguette), is in fact a Korean chain. Oops.
Not sure how this compares in silliness to the "freedom fries" incident. I think the Americans still are leading, just based on scope; this was neighborhood-level ridiculousness, not ridiculousness in the Capitol Building. But if China continues like this, they may still pull it out and get the medal.
There actually is an important issue behind both this and the other random nationalist upswings, though. I feel like the people in Zhongnanhai must be extremely ambivalent about this. On the one hand, they tend to like nationalism, and use it as a way to unify the country; as lots of smart people have written, it's pretty much the only ideology that they can justify their rule on nowadays. So the way that the Chinese have rallied around the flag in the past weeks is great news for them from that perspective. But on the other hand, as these recent anti-French actions show, nationalism anywhere in the world can quickly turn into xenophobia. Normally that's not a problem here; as long as the Chinese people support the government, the government doesn't usually care if they hate everyone else. But this is the year when everyone else in the world will be coming to China, and China has put a lot of work into making them feel welcome. And if, say, the French Olympic team arrives only to be greeted with flung eggs and rotten tomatoes, that's not going to seem very hospitable, and if this develops, it could actually do more than any Tibetan protesters to spoil the Olympics. And the people in Zhongnanhai also don't want that.
So what would you do? Foster the nationalism and boost your legitimacy, or clamp down (and make yourself seem weaker, by not responding to the insults of the world) but be seen as better Olympic hosts?
Only problem? Tous les Jours, like most of the "French-style" bakery/cafes in this area (see also Paris Baguette), is in fact a Korean chain. Oops.
Not sure how this compares in silliness to the "freedom fries" incident. I think the Americans still are leading, just based on scope; this was neighborhood-level ridiculousness, not ridiculousness in the Capitol Building. But if China continues like this, they may still pull it out and get the medal.
There actually is an important issue behind both this and the other random nationalist upswings, though. I feel like the people in Zhongnanhai must be extremely ambivalent about this. On the one hand, they tend to like nationalism, and use it as a way to unify the country; as lots of smart people have written, it's pretty much the only ideology that they can justify their rule on nowadays. So the way that the Chinese have rallied around the flag in the past weeks is great news for them from that perspective. But on the other hand, as these recent anti-French actions show, nationalism anywhere in the world can quickly turn into xenophobia. Normally that's not a problem here; as long as the Chinese people support the government, the government doesn't usually care if they hate everyone else. But this is the year when everyone else in the world will be coming to China, and China has put a lot of work into making them feel welcome. And if, say, the French Olympic team arrives only to be greeted with flung eggs and rotten tomatoes, that's not going to seem very hospitable, and if this develops, it could actually do more than any Tibetan protesters to spoil the Olympics. And the people in Zhongnanhai also don't want that.
So what would you do? Foster the nationalism and boost your legitimacy, or clamp down (and make yourself seem weaker, by not responding to the insults of the world) but be seen as better Olympic hosts?