China: April 12, 2005

Archives

The anti-Japan protests organized by the government for the last two weekends have gotten out of hand, with more student groups, in other cities,  organizing unofficial protests. Last weekends demonstrations were apparently organized to rally nationalistic feelings and distract people from the serious problems of government corruption. The demonstrations were supposed to be about Japanese textbooks that play down Japanese atrocities during World War II, and Japanese "arrogance" in general. Japanese have long had an attitude problem with the Chinese, and Chinese resent that Japanese sense of superiority. But these things have been around for a while, and it is believed that the government organized demonstrations were simply a sanctioned way to let the students blow off steam as Spring arrives.