Security high in China after days of protest against Japan

[homasse]

Security high in China after days of protest against Japan

Security forces patrolled the streets of many parts of China Tuesday after three days of rowdy anti-Japanese protests.

The protests began Saturday and lasted through Monday. Most of the demonstrations took place in central China, which is home to many Japanese factories.While reports on

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Oh boy. :( It probably won't come to anything much in the grand scheme of things, but even so, dnw.

[autumnleaving]

WOW.

Really?

The only icon I have relevant to the country and I think there's some irony to it.

[mycroftholmes]

I'd like to see more of what specifically angered the protestors, but the news I find is just "people are protesting" or "security is higher" not "this is why they are pissed" :(

[homasse]

They're still protesting Japan over the recent spat, where Japan arrested the captain of a ship that rammed their coast guard ships. Since it happened in the area around the Senkaku Islands, it turned into them seeing Japan as being aggressive and trying to take their territory, and things snowballed from there as anti-Japanese sentiment exploded and hasn't died down at all.

Just yesterday, the governor of Osaka was disinvited from the Shanghai Expo.

[hinoema]

So (Government X) is stoking the flames against (Government Y) to distract the people from legitimate anger against their own government. Oldest trick in the book, maybe.

[homasse]

Yup. These protests have to be happening with at least some level of government approval, or else they wouldn't be happening.

Also, I was talking about this with some friends at lunch, and one of them pointed out something interesting--her Japanese friends who lived in China were saying that the press there wasn't reporting the protests, and so a lot of Chinese people didn't know they were happening. It's been all over the Japanese press, but zip in China itself.

[perthro]

They've been fighting each other for what, 400 years? The two countries used to be friends- clothing and hairstyles played off of each other, a written language system was adopted from China, the Japanese invented and gave the sensu (the folding fan) to China. Nihongami (Japanese hair, literally) were styles adapted from Chugokujin (Chinese people) high fashion.

Now they both get the idea that invading each other and taking over each other is the right idea, and both bitch about how much worse one invasion was compared to another, when they are all pretty horrific. Hell, that war criminal Akihito (Showa, the emperor behind the Rape of Nanking) is DEAD, and I think the idea that Japan is going to be taking over ANYONE is pretty much gone. At least, for now.

Why not just make reparations on both sides and truce it? There was so much going for both countries when they shared resources while remaining independent from each other.

Then again, I guess that could be said for a lot of us.