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Anti-Carrefour protests organized yesterday May 1 in Beijing, Ningbo, Chongqing and other Chinese cities do not appear to have amounted to much (see New York Times story, and these photos from Ningbo), but the atmosphere of nationalistic fervor continues.
The Olympic Games seem to encourage ahistorical comparisons with other Games in Munich, Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow. But the current situation in China is probably best viewed in context with previous outbreaks of nationalism within China, such as the anti-Japanese protests of 2005.
Below is an article by scholar Geremie R. Barmé that was originally published on May 11, 2005, in the Japan Focus online newsletter, 11 May 2005, and on May 12, 2005, in ‘Historians’ Take on the News’ on the History News Network.
Mirrors of History
On a Sino-Japanese Moment and Some Antecedents
by Geremie R. Barmé
May 4 2005 marked the 76th anniversary of the iconic Chinese patriotic protest movement. It was the day in 1919 when students led popular protests against Japan’s imperial ambitions in China. It was also a seminal moment in the historical construction of modern China, prefiguring and also influencing the rise of the Communist Party itself in 1921,and marking a stage in the cultural and social transformation that remains at the heart of modern Chinese identities.
May 4, Youth Day, and May 1, International Labor Day, now fall within a weeklong holiday in China. This year that holiday is being celebrated in many ways during a period of particular tension. There are reports of busloads of police and soldiers being deployed to protect Japanese interests in the Chinese capital and other cities; there are also reports of a high state of vigilance on the part of the authorities regarding any mass protests against Japan following from the outpourings of April.
One of the interesting aspects of official attempts to reign in volatile popular emotions, an aspect of no great significance but one wherein, I believe, we can catch a glimpse of the fascinating yet unsettling face of China’s contemporary cheery authoritarianism, is the mass SMS (Short Message Service) mobile text messages that went streaming out to phone users throughout Beijing from the start of this holiday season. I believe that mass mailings of text messages were made by all the leading telecoms in Beijing at the behest of the Public Security Bureau (but, one wonders, who paid the tab?). They articulate in the truncated language of the SMS, something familiar to us all, the latest party line on public antagonism to Japan. Let me share three of the messages that were sent to me yesterday, May 4, from bemused and befuddled friends in Beijing with you:
‘The Beijing Public Security Bureau would like to remind you of the following: don’t believe rumors, don’t spread rumours, express your patriotic fervor in rational ways. Don't participate in illegal demonstrations. –Wangtong Telecommunications wishes you a happy Labour Day!’
‘Don’t create trouble when all you want to do is help! Be patriotic, but don’t break the law. Be a solid, law-abiding citizen.’
‘Usually you’re busy and exhausted, so let this be a happy Labor Day holiday week. We can only build a harmonious society if we are disciplined and respect the law.’
北京市公安局提请您，不信谣、不传谣，理性表达爱国热情。不参加非法游行活动。中国网通公司祝您五一节日快乐！
帮忙不要添乱，爱国不要违法，做一个遵纪守法的好公民。中国王通公司祝您五一节日快乐！
平日忙碌辛苦，五一长假快乐，构建和谐社会，定要遵纪守法。
As the mass protests against Japan unfolded in cities throughout China this April, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who was on an official visit to New Delhi, remarked at a news conference that:
"Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for its past, and wins over the trust of the people of Asia and the world at large can take greater responsibility in the international community."
Meanwhile, back in Beijing, Qin Gang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said when addressing the regular media briefing for foreign and Chinese journalists, that the protests were "totally spontaneous." Furthermore, reported China Daily the official English-language newspaper in China, they were “prompted by the Chinese public's dissatisfaction at ‘the bad practice and attitude adopted by the Japanese side on its history of aggression.’ ”[1]
Indeed, we should note that through the media the Chinese authorities promote themselves as the natural representatives and energetic defenders of China’s national interests (integral to the ‘three representatives’ [sange daibiao] catechism formulated by former Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who was in turn taking a page from the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, egging on nationalistic outbursts while at the same time retaining the right to repress them. The authorities would exercise this right when Shanghai’s Liberation Daily published on 22 April an editorial in which a heinous plot with murky aims was spoken of in a prelude to the further suppression of mass unrest.
Facing up to history, respecting history, learning the lessons of history are all themes of both official and popular protests against Japan’s officially-sanctioned textbooks, the visits of government officials to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and the perceived failure of Japan as a nation to show full and continued contrition for the acts of imperial aggression throughout East and Southeast Asia before and during WWII.
I remember well as a young scholar living in Kyoto in 1982 hearing about and then being party to the heated discussions of Chinese students at Kyoto University when the first ructions regarding Japanese high-school textbooks appeared. The texts being protested against then used the vocabulary of modest obfuscation to describe the egregious acts of aggression in China, in particular at the time of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the bloody occupation of Nanjing and the invasion of East China. Such popular discontent has been a feature of the creation of the ‘public’ since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The outrage and despair felt by Chinese colleagues then has, in later generations, only grown as new texts, even if only marginal within the Japanese education system, feed into a perception that China’s neighbour continues to avoid confronting its—albeit imperial—past. There is an abiding—and even mounting—sentiment that ‘Japan’ continues to be insensitive to the feelings of others in the region in regard to that past, and that it is a nation that is incapable of redressing those wrongs through meaningful, substantive and sustained acts and expressions of official contrition. This is also despite the fact that the issue of comfort women and the atrocities in Nanjing are now mentioned in some texts, even if inadequately. At the same time, continuous regional unease and even hostility towards Japan appears to have encouraged and legitimated a resurgence of neo-nationalism in Japan itself.
Injunctions such as Premier Wen Jiabao’s to learn from history and not to repeat the mistakes of the past are common in China today. Indeed, such admonitions have been characteristic of elite political pronouncements, historical writings, thought and philosophy in China from well before the Christian era. The classical expression yi shi wei jian, ‘use history as a mirror’ (in which one reflects on one’s own image), is still in common usage.
However, some commentators—dissenting writers on the Chinese-language Internet, and scholars and political scientists internationally—were much exercised by Wen Jiabao’s magisterial and, they observed, patronizing statement. Many were quick to point out that, if the Chinese government wants to invoke history as a guide to the present, and to use it as a standard by which countries should measure themselves, then China and the Communist Party that rules it, should take a long hard look at their own woeful record. Many said that China itself has little respect for the truths of history or that as a nation it was incapable of formulating a suitably responsible attitude to its own past (be it that of the deadly 1950s, the suppression of the Lhasa Uprising, the famine of the early 60s, the Cultural Revolution era, or in regard to more recent popular ructions such as the repression of peaceful mass protests in 1989 and 1999).
Adding further to the overlapping of histories, and accounts of atrocities and violence—and I don’t raise these to confuse the issues being discussed today, but as a way to alert this audience to the complex historical cross currents that flow through the private and Internet discussions and debates concerning these very fraught issues—is the presence in mainland China these last days of Lien Chan, head of the KMT, formerly the ruling party in Taiwan, and prior to 1949 the party at the heart of the Republic of China’s government.
For at this juncture we should also be mindful of the fact that for over 40 years, the Chinese Communist Party as the ruling party on the mainland invoked the crimes, the mass murders, the deadly policies and the class warfare essayed by the KMT as a justification for its rule and its ruthless repression of opponents. For its part, the KMT government on Taiwan never tired in its propaganda against the ‘Communist bandits’ on the mainland to speak of the brutality, violence and mass murders being perpetrated by their enemies, the victors in the Civil War of the late 1940s and the founders of the People’s Republic of China. A rhetorical pitched battle between these contenders for national political and cultural legitimacy was once bellicose and incessant. It continues today with different actors and in muted form.
Having said this, let me speak of histories of a more recent provenance, histories that are also related to protests, outpourings of emotion and questions of constructed truthfulness.
First, a snapshot from twenty years ago. On 19 May 1985, a soccer riot broke out in Beijing after a match between the Chinese and then independent Hong Kong soccer teams at the Worker’s Stadium in the Chinese capital. It was the first large-scale spontaneous riot in the capital since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Angry crowds overturned cars, stopped taxis and harassed foreigners. Anti-foreign slogans were chanted and many violent clashes took place involving police and militia. Numerous international media reports spoke of the hooligans involved as being like the Boxer rebels of 1900 who sacked foreign legations in the imperial capital; an inchoate mob involved in a xenophobic frenzy. Reports also noted that the rioters were particularly venomous in the verbal attacks on Japan.
The then noted Beijing novelist Liu Xinwu wrote a controversial account of the incident called ‘Zooming in on May 19’ (Wuyaojiu chang jingtou). It is a reportage, or semi-fictional reconstruction of the events of that night. He spoke not of hooliganism as much as the mass anti-foreign sentiment that had been welling up in the capital for years as rich foreign investors, especially other Asians, flooded into the city and vaunted their superior material lifestyles. He also wrote in detail of the mounting sense of outrage people felt at the corruption and political opacity of the party rulers, as well as of the general disquiet people felt towards a government that seemed to be pandering to foreign interests, in particular Japan.
Liu rejected foreign reports that the rioters were just like the Boxers of 1900, reports that claimed also that the rioters were similar to the Red Guards who wreaked havoc in Beijing and throughout China in 1966-67. He said that the Boxers, soldiers in a rebellious army who believed that they could deploy the spiritual forces of ancient China to protect themselves against the bullets and bayonets of foreign troops, had invoked the spirits of legend and traditional fiction to come to their aid. Their chant he says was:
‘Heavenly spirits, earthly wraiths
We beg all masters to answer our call…
To lead 100,000 heavenly troops…’
Now, Liu said, it was not about warfare and victory, and he made up a new chant that he believed better reflected the aspirations of China’s young people in the mid 1980s:
‘Heavenly spirits, earthly wraiths
We all want to have a good time…
We want jeans,
We want discos and Washi cosmetics,
We want Sharp, Toshiba, and Hitachi electrical appliances,
We want Suzuki,Yamaha, plus Seiko and Citizen…’[2]
An appreciation of this interaction with the foreign, one of attraction and concomitant rejection, fascination and revulsion, material lure commingled with emotional repugnance is, I would venture, important for a deeper understanding of this dynamic. It is a central dynamic within the intellectual, cultural and political realms of late dynastic and modern China, and one persuasively discussed by both Gloria Davies in a major new work, and by Peter Gries in his China’s New Nationalism.[3]
Liu Xinwu, who was one of the stars of post-Cultural Revolution writing, was criticized by the authorities for depicting this sense of social anomie. For the authorities were deeply concerned about mass sentiment regarding Japan. The general support for the new post-Mao regime had been shaken by the egregious efforts of Hu Yaobang, the head of the party, to forge closer links of friendship and cooperation with Japan (including organizing a mass visit of Japanese young people to China which I remember being particularly galling to openly outraged and hostile citizens of Nanjing); and one of the elder figures in politics, Liao Chengzhi, had been pilloried for his support of Japan. The sentiment that Liu described so powerfully in his account of the 1985 riot, found voice once more in a far more popular work of 1988 when the tele-series ‘River Elegy’ (Heshang) was screened nationwide.
In what was the most popular show of its kind broadcast in China up to that time, the narrator said:
Over the past century we have continually been losers. First we lost to England, then to the Eight Powers during the Boxer Rebellion, then to the Japanese. Having finally gotten rid of the Japanese, New China enjoyed a short period of pride and achievement. Who was to guess that when we finally woke up from the thirty-odd years of internal turmoil we had created, we would find ourselves in the company of nations like Tanzania and Zambia? Even South Korea and Singapore were ahead of us. And as for the Japanese, they were the ones laughing, now that they were back with their Toshibas, Hitachis, Toyotas, Crowns, Yamahas, and Casios. [4]
Secondly, we can focus in on 1989. Although it has been common for people to talk of the mass national protests of the spring of 1989 which led to the bloody repression of 4 June, as a ‘democracy movement’, for those who were witness to it, and who heard the slogans and read the pamphlets produced by the protestors in Beijing, there was also a powerful undercurrent that was pointedly anti-corruption, anti-privilege, and critical of a government that was perceived of as having given into major foreign nations on trade deals and issues of national pride. In particular, Japan. Indeed, Zhao Ziyang, the Premier turned Party General Secretary, was directly targeted during the early weeks of the 1989 protests as being a man deeply involved in the incursion of foreign, in particular Japanese, capital in China. He was derided, among other things, for enjoying golf with his foreign friends….
There are just a few examples of the kind of public outpourings in the 1980s that already give us some insight into mass sentiment and the form of popular expression that it can take and the nationalistic undertow that runs through them. I recall these things here to provide something of a context to the ugly events of this April.
One could say there is a certain pattern of the past discernable in the way the authorities have run these protests. We have long seen in China political campaigns and mass movements that follow a similar pattern or political logic. This is a logic familiar to us from the 1956-7 Hundred Flowers/Anti-Rightist period, as well as from the early stages of the Cultural Revolution in the mid 1960s. But let me summarize my view of this ‘logic’ with a crude summary:
There is an issue of official or presumed popular concern, the authorities urge people both within the apparat and more generally to speak out. A period of public fervor, both orchestrated and spontaneous, unfolds. This may be egged on so that mass sentiment can find expression but also be gauged. Then things go too far; the authorities are alerted to the fact that events could get out of hand and the outpourings could turn nasty or, more to the point, they could be used by ill-disciplined malcontents to be directed against the power-holders themselves. There are cautious and then more strident calls for order, followed by cautionary detentions and arrests. These are accompanied by official statements, which usually take the form of editorials in leading newspapers. The tone is set by authorities higher up. It is declared that a sinister and long-planned plot has been uncovered. A few schemers are taking advantage of mass sentiment and the correct expression of popular dissatisfaction to further their own insidious aims and realize unspeakable goals. Their heinous desire is to disrupt society and derail modernization. Such unscrupulous individuals must be exposed and dealt with. Innocents should be vigilant and not be taken in; they must not spread rumours or encourage gossip. They should obey the laws and not be duped by rabble-rousers. What follows are exemplary arrests, trials and convictions. As all protest is repressed, people feel manipulated, mass sentiment is not assuaged, and the underlying problems that sparked the outpourings in the first place are not addressed in any meaningful way.
In conclusion, I would suggest that there is another historical moment that has had a profound impact on the forging—and the fragility—of the Sino-Japanese relationship. I would like to take another step back in time. This time, however, it is not May 4, 1919 or May 19, 1985, but rather September 27, 1972. This is the day on which Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, met in Beijing with Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei during his ground-breaking official visit to the People’s Republic. As a result of that meeting and the attendant discussions by the leaders and their officials, Sino-Japanese relations entered the present stage of what is called ‘normalization’.
The US-based historian Yinan He has noted in his paper ‘National Mythmaking and the Problems of History in Sino-Japanese Relations’ that:
The Chinese government was rather quick to accept Japanese superficial apology and concede claims for war reparation in exchange for early diplomatic normalization. Shortly before Tanaka’s visit to China, the CCP Central Committee issued an internal policy document stating that Sino-Japanese normalization would first of all “contribute to the struggle against the American and Soviet hegemonism, especially the Soviet revisionism,” but also [be] useful for opposing Japanese militarist revival, liberating Taiwan, and mitigating tensions in Asia.[5] It was clear to China that a quick Sino-Japanese normalization was highly profitable in strategic terms, compared to which settling historical account was considered [to be of] secondary interest.[6]
For his part, Mao Zedong, the party chairman who, along with his premier Zhou Enlai, was designing post-Cultural Revolution China’s reengagement with the world, saw the history of the past and the relationship of his party’s rise to power to it in a very particular way.
When he met with Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakue on 27 September 1972, Mao Zedong expressed his views with characteristic irony.
Mao: We must express our gratitude to Japan. If Japan didn’t invade China, we could have never achieved the cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party. We could have never developed and eventually taken political power for ourselves. It is due to Japan’s help that we are able to meet here in Beijing .
For his part, Tanaka used a vacuous and abstract formulation in regards to the war of a kind that has become all too familiar since this encounter. He said,
“By invading China Japan created a lot of trouble for China.”
[Following an intervention by Mao, in the official communiqué regarding Tanaka’s visit this was expressed somewhat more clearly as, “The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself.”]
Mao’s riposte was:
“If Japan hadn’t invaded China, the Chinese Communist Party would not have been victorious, moreover we would never be meeting today. This is the dialectic of history.”[7]
In that one simple exchange, the foundations for the unsettled and continued unsettling Sino-Japanese relationship were laid out.
This then is a mirror of History.
1972年9月27日，毛泽东主席会见田中角荣等来访日本客人时的谈话摘要：
毛主席说：……我们要感谢日本，没有日本侵略中国，我们就不可能取得国共合作，我们就不能得到发展，最后取得政权。……我们是有你们的帮助，今天才能在北京见你们。
当田中角荣就“日本侵华给中国人们添了很大麻烦”的说法进行解释的时候，毛主席说：那就好了，你们那个增添麻烦的说法就这样解决了？田中角荣说：我们打算按照中国的（语言）习惯改（通过姬鹏飞外长和大平正芳外相的进一步会谈，在最后的公报中改成“痛感日本过去由于战争给中国人民造成的严重损害的责任，表示深刻的反省”）。毛主席说：如果没有日本侵华，也就没有共产党的胜利，更不会有今天的会谈。……这就是历史的辩证法嘛”。
Notes
1: Zhao Huanxin and Hu Qihua, “Japan told to face up to history, reflect on protests,” China Daily, April 13, 2005.
2: Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin, eds, New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices (New York: Times Books, 1992), pp.275-76.
3: New Ghosts, Old Dreams, p.274.
4: Gloria Davies, “Reflections on Cultural Integrity and National Perfection,”, cht.6 in Worrying About China: The Language of Critical Inquiry and China (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Peter Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp.31-40.
5: Delivered at the “Conference on Memory of War,” 24-25 January 2003, MIT.
6: “Guanyu jiedai Riben Tianzhong shouxiang fang Hua de neibu xuanchuan tigang [Internal Propaganda Outline Regarding the Reception of Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka], September 7, 1972,” in Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao wengao (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1987-1990), Vol. 13, p. 316.
7: See Dangdai Zhongguo waijiao ziliaozu, ed., Xin Zhongguo waijiao yu lingshi gongzuo, ziliao juan san (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1987), pp.127-8; and Mao Zedongde guoji jiaowang (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1995), p.41. This article is from Danwei.org
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 Tan Fei argues with Wang Xiaodong while Zhang Huajie and Lao Ma look on
There's nothing wrong with opposing the boycott against Carrefour, but you need to be more sophisticated in your techniques.
So said Wang Xiaodong, a well-known nationalist academic and essayist who defended the Carrefour boycotts during a televised discussion last week that erupted into a heated argument.
Wang's admonition is eye-catching because we've mostly seen the warnings going in the other direction over the past few weeks, from blogger-celebrities like Han Han warning readers against extreme displays of patriotism, to public figures interviewed by the liberal press speaking in measured tones about the need for cool heads.
Black and White Cat translated a Southern Weekly interview with Wu Jianmin, former ambassador to France, who disapproved of the boycott:
Some self-styled "patriotic" actions have damaged the interests of these staff, damaged the interests of China and damaged China's image. If there are many excessive actions people don't know what you might do next. They can't be sure about you and their misgivings and anxiety about you will increase. Patriotism is a good thing, but it must be guided by reason. Patriotism must be in line with core national interests.
Southern Weekly also interviewed TV host Bai Yansong, who was an early opponent of the proposed boycott. From ESWN's translation:
One must be restrained by rationality when one expresses one's voices. One must observe the legal and moral bottom lines. When passions coalesce, it is easy to step past the line with bad consequences. Since the law does not hold bar these expressions, people seldom reflect and discipline themselves and they will repeat the same thing the next time. The attraction of democracy is rationality. A democracy not supported by rationality is destructive as opposed to constructive.
The Inner Mongolia TV panel show On the Scene (现场), hosted by Zhao Chuan, formerly of Beijing TV's Who's Talking? (谁在说), pitted Wang Xiaodong, whom Sina identifies as an "exponent of nationalism," against several individuals opposed to the boycott. Wang felt that the panel seemed specially chosen to marginalize patriotic support for the boycott, and when he returned from the taping, he wrote up a blog post elaborating on arguments he attempted to make during the session:
Patriots are the majority, so is patriotism a disgrace for intellectuals?
by Wang Xiaodong
Today (23 April, 2008) at 6 pm, I went to a TV station (so as not to cause trouble for the station employee who invited me, I have to hide its name) to do a program about the Carrefour boycott. This program was hosted by a famous TV host (so as not to cause trouble for the station employee who invited me, I have to hide the host's name).
The station invited the person who opposed the Carrefour boycott in Kunming and was struck by a water bottle, as well as a young person who had held a sign at the Zhongguancun Carrefour in Beijing. Later, the person who had started putting hearts on MSN came out, too. When they started their discussion, I was in the control room watching on the screen. Apart from me, there were also three so-called "intellectuals" in the control room. They seemed to know each other, and they discussed the Carrefour boycott in extremely dismissive tones. One of them, a college professor, had been assigned to the side supporting the Carrefour boycott, but he wasn't too thrilled. I didn't know them, but I sat watching the television as I listened to them berate the boycotters.
After about 50 minutes, the first segment of the program had finished recording. The host called us up, so we went up. I found that next to me was a very pretty young woman whom I later learned was a singer, so for a time I felt slightly less alone (the professor was merely assigned with us, but he was obviously on their side: bluntly speaking, he was nothing more than an agent provocateur. Of course, so long as it was a fair debate, then it didn't matter if they were three or thirty together—they weren't more than I could handle. But you never want to be lonely, so having this pretty young woman next to me made me feel a little better). The host was quite polite toward me and told me to speak after the pretty young woman had finished talking. During the first segment, I had already thought out what I was going to say. I had noticed that the youngster who had held up the sign boycotting the Zhongguancun Carrefour was kind of naive and was unable to combat some of the more obvious distorted arguments, so I had felt anxious for him. Now that I had the chance to speak, I first wanted to help him clear up some of the specious arguments against the boycott. I started by saying, there's nothing wrong with opposing the boycott against Carrefour, but you need to be more sophisticated in your techniques. Then I went on to present rebuttals to the more common specious arguments against the boycott.
Here, let me inform you that you'll never see my rebuttals on the TV screen. But I can write them out here. None is my own invention: I saw some online, while others I learned from listening to experts at conferences, like the lectures of professor Cheng Xiaoxia of the China University of Political Science and Law.
(1) Refuting "Carrefour is innocent and French goods are innocent, so they shouldn't be boycotted." I said that regardless of whether Carrefour had done anything wrong, regardless of whether French goods had done anything wrong, boycotting Carrefour and French goods is permisible. The objective of the boycott is to (a) express an opinion that can easily reach people's ears, and (b) put pressure on France. In answer to the challenge, "if you've got the guts, why not go demonstrate in front of the French embassy?" I said, for the purposes of the two objectives mentioned above, I am completely entitled to choose a convenient boycott target. When group A in some country offends us, we may not have the wherewithal to counter A, but we are entirely able to choose to retaliate against group B in order to exert pressure against that country. This is the principle of "cross-retaliation" in international law. The WTO clearly recognizes the use of this principle in international trade, so there's nothing wrong with using it in other international conflicts. If you say that cross-retaliation isn't easy to understand, then I'll use a more obvious example. I asked the host, does the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay have anything to do with China's policies in Tibet? The host said, no it doesn't. Then I asked, is Jin Jing able to decide China's policy in Tibet? The host said, no she can't. Then, I said, why did they try to disrupt the torch relay and attack Jin Jing in order to protest China's policies in Tibet? It's obvious that this is common international practice. You're always for pushing for "adherence to international standards," so why can't you accept this standard? In answer to my statement, the guy who got hit with the water bottle in Kunming seized the opportunity and said, if it's like you say, then everyone can boycott Carrefour, except for you, Mr. Wang, because you're just like those people who wrecked the torch relay in France. Of course, this is more specious reasoning that people who've been brainwashed by so-called gentleness and cultivation over the past few years can't easily see through. I refuted this in (2).
(2) Refuting "because the French were wrong in boycotting the torch relay, we shouldn't be like them, so we shouldn't boycott anything French." I said, your argument's nonsense. For example, when someone hits you out of the blue, of course he's wrong, then if I say you can in no way hit him, then aren't you're also in the wrong if you hit him? But in that case, I've stripped away your right to self-defense; you can't say anything even if you're beaten to death, because a great deal of self-defense involves hitting people! The guy from Kunming said, but Carrefour wasn't the one who attacked Jin Jing. I said, that's more specious reasoning. The guy who's boycotting Carrefour just put it like this: the issue now is not between someone in China and someone in France—fundamentally, it's an issue between the countries of China and France.
(3) Refuting "90% of Carrefour's products are from China and 90% of Carrefour employees are Chinese, so by boycotting Carrefour you're hurting Chinese suppliers and employees." I said, first, the goal of the majority of Carrefour boycotters is just to express their opinions, or to put pressure on the French government. They don't want to ruin Carrefour, so "hurting Chinese suppliers and employees" is an untenable argument. In addition, as lots of online posts have pointed out, even if Carrefour is ruined, China has other major chain supermarkets, so Chinese suppliers can go there to sell their goods, and Chinese employees can go there to find work.
If I could continue speaking along these lines, and my opponents could continue to rebut me in the same way, everything would be good—everyone could expect to see a great debate. However, I didn't get a chance to speak two words when the guy opposite me, looking really fierce with his shaven head (I recall that he was called "Huajie" [Zhang Huajie], by the host and others; he seemed to be a filmmaker and was quite well-acquainted with the TV station people), started to berate me: You're just sucking up to the government! You're bold enough to boycott Carrefour, but do you dare boycott anything else? The best line from the fierce guy with the bald head was this: Now that the majority of people are showing patriotism, patriotism is powerful. As an intellectual, standing on the side of power, your patriotism is your shame! He continued to repeat that sentence and I started and stopped a number of times. I looked at the host—this extremely well-known TV host had no reaction whatsoever. I finally understood: the arguments I wanted to present were understandable to legal experts and to politically-concerned netizens, but much of the TV audience may not have understood. And they were afraid, they were very afraid that the audience in front of their TV screens would understand my arguments. So they stirred things up so that they basically didn't broadcast any scenes of me presenting my arguments. Even so, I didn't hold back—what I could do today was to let the twenty-some members of the studio audience know that those so-called "liberal" rascals weren't at all reasonable. I couldn't be cultivated, because if I were, then the studio audience would have only heard that boycotting Carrefour was sucking up to the government, that intellectuals who supported the boycott were not only sucking up to the government but pandering as well, that patriotism was intellectuals' shame. So I talked back loudly.
I've been a guest on countless TV stations in China and in other countries in the world—many countries in Europe, the Middle East, the US, and Australia. I've done many segments of TV discussion programs and have been gotten good reviews countless times. The other night I did an interview at my home with a Spanish TV station that was on the same topic as today's program. When I work with TV stations, a basic principle I use is that while I am expressing my independent opinions, I try as hard as possible to cooperate with the TV station employees and not do anything to mess them up. Because I know that doing a TV program is like when I write an essay: it draws together the efforts of lots of people, so I can't destroy their labors simply for a brief thrill. However, this time, when I saw that the host and the other program people weren't at all concerned when the bald guy with the fierce expression started wrecking the program, I felt that there was no reason for me to worry about protecting it. Indeed, I was angry; I saw that those people who claimed to be "liberal" were actually a group of dark-hearted people, scum who were up to tricks and schemes. They're afraid of the truth so they won't let you speak the truth, they won't permit the public, whom they've hoodwinked, to learn that there is another truth in the world. Liberalism is the last refuge of hucksters and scoundrels—that's how the line should really go.
(4) Refuting "Now that the majority of people are showing patriotism, patriotism is powerful. As an intellectual, standing on the side of power, your patriotism is your shame!" In the studio, I couldn't rebut this in calm tones. I could only shout. Here, I can calmly write out what I shouted at the time: Aren't you all about democracy? Isn't democracy decided by the majority? By that reasoning, aren't democratic policies simply mistresses to money, and isn't that a disgrace? Who'd have thought you could come up with this kind of shameful logic! This is the stupid, shameful, and gangster logic of the so-called "liberals."
(5) Refuting "It's no use to boycott Carrefour. The French president may apologize, but what's important is that 20 billion euros." This wasn't spoken by that bald liberal scoundrel; it was said by someone on his side who was relatively courteous. He said to me, "Boycotting Carrefour gave the expected pressure to the French government. Didn't the French president write a letter of apology to Jin Jing, which was personally delivered by the president of the senate?" In answer to this question, I said, there was that 20-billion euro order, but that wasn't able to prevent them, including their government, from supporting Tibetan independence and disrupting the torch relay, was it? And the French president's letter of apology came late, too, after the mass boycotts against Carrefour all over China. The New York Times commented: the French president "appeared to be kowtowing more to French commercial interests than to Beijing." Without the boycott by the Chinese public, would those businessmen have put pressure on their own government?
I've finished discussing the issues I wanted to clear up. Finally, let me speak of some other impressions about the process. I think that the young man who held up the sign boycotting the Zhongguancun Carrefour was pretty indecisive. He didn't utter a word, perhaps because of stage-fright, or perhaps he was grumbling to himself that I was a "Boxer" who had disgraced him (that bald liberal scoundrel was shouting: You're a disgrace to nationalism! I answered: You're a disgrace to the human race! Those scoundrel liberals are so low that calling them amoebas would be praising them—and insulting amoebas). I wanted to tell that young man, if you think that, you're wrong, you've fallen in their trap. They're telling you that "Boxers" and "angry youth" are boycotting Carrefour, so you're really afraid that other people will see you as one of them. You really want to appear genteel, so you've bound up your hands and feet. But they can act as hooliganish as they please—that's what they want. Let me tell you: you don't need to feel so inferior: the "Boxers" and "angry youth" of today's China for the most part come out of big-name universities in China and the west. The scoundrel liberals don't have any reason to feel superior in learning, intelligence, ethics, or even cultural sophistication. They can still hold that stance because they still control the dialogue. But this control was given to them by the same government that they criticize and pretend not to know. We have no reason to feel inferior in learning, intelligence, ethics, or even cultural sophistication.
I haven't forgotten that pretty young singer, although I don't remember her name. Of course, she was no match for an old warrior like me in the argument department, but her pretty face, should the program be broadcast, would certainly make her words more convincing. But the important thing wasn't her pretty face, but rather, in an environment that cut down Chinese who boycotted Carrefour (actually, I was quite aware in the control room, during the first segment when we so-called "intellectuals" and that singer had not yet gone on, that the atmosphere of this program had already been set), she bravely explained her opinion in support of the Carrefour boycott. Don't be misled that under today's "patriotic power" conditions that everything is easy. This is not an easy thing to do, because even today, it's hard to say whether there is "patriotic power," and in that small group in that atmosphere, patriotism was disadvantaged, and was even condemned as a "shame" by that bald liberal scoundrel. Look at the young man who had bravely held up a sign outside of the Zhongguancun Carrefour—during the second segment he dare stand up and say anything. This shows us even more the singer's courage. In the past, I've been really put off by the idea of "women rising and men declining" (阴盛阳衰), but recently, in the series of discussions I've had with traitors (that word does not in any way mistreat those liberal scoundrels), I've repeatedly seen women who are resolute and courageous, while men are cautious and indecisive. Chinese young men, you can't just let us old men charge the enemy lines with young women while you hide in back! You've got to stand up!
However, this old warrior isn't dead yet. Old warriors never die; they just pass on.
Sina's report on the program illustrated just how heated the argument became:
Tang Fei and Zhang Huajie said, "This saber-rattling attitude toward a boycott is cheap, hypocritical, and a way to suck up to the government." "Nationalism exponent" Wang Xiaodong reacted immediately and stood up on stage, pointing at Tang and Zhang: "You're the running dogs, yet you criticize me! You're a disgrace to everyone on earth!"
Host Zhao Chuan was eventually able to get everyone to return to their seats, but to everyone's surprise things started up again. This time Tan Fei jumped up too, and the two faced each other center-stage, arguing heatedly. Zhao had to use his powers as host to take over and force the end of the debate. When recording had finished, Zhang Huajie got up and extended his hand to Wang in a gesture of peace, but Wang walked off stage without looking back.
Afterward, Zhao Chuan said in an interview that the Carrefour boycott topic could easily get people riled up. Although the guests each came with their own opinions, and although there were heated debates and arguments on-stage, they were all expressing their patriotic feelings. If the broadcast on the 27th can resonate with TV viewers, then the program will have achieved its objectives.
Zhang Huajie has taken issue with Wang's characterization of his attitude, in particular the line about "intellectuals' shame," which he says he never uttered. He's offering 300,000 yuan for a recording of the entire session and has threatened to take Wang to court
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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 April 19, 2008 — riot police disperse protesters inside Carrefour store Han Han (韩寒) is a novelist with a huge and dedicated fan base. He is also a racing driver, and a blogger.
On his blog he has recently been discouraging his compatriots from getting too passionate about their patriotism. Here is a translation of a blog post he published on April 25
If you are a student
by Han Han
If you are a student, a university student, I have a suggestion for you. If you like something buy it, if you don't like something don't buy it, but don't demonstrate on the streets.
Protests and rallies are addictive. Today you carry the flag of patriotism against the outside world, tomorrow you carry the flag of patriotism against...
So you won't get support. During the whole process, all you can do is face the Chinese people and the Chinese riot police. You won't eveb see one blonde hair [i.e. foreigners]. Don't let pointless injury or death happen. Patriotism is not a golden talisman that will protect you from dying. In fact patriotism can be the death of you.
 May 4, 1919 — student protests in Beijing In an era of peace, radical patriotism is no different from a fan's adoration of his idol. But because people don't choose the object of their patriotic love, it's bound to be ever crazier. Previously, I thought inciting the masses was just government rhetoric, a pretext, but now I realize that people can be stirred up rashly. Of course, it's not easy to incite people but when they are determined to be cannon fodder, it's easy for them to blow up. Don't equate the current situation with the May Fourth movement [when patriotic students protested the Versailles treaty in 1919], the two situations are totally different. Right now what we need is stability. Don't cause disturbances or stir up trouble, it's pointless.
To repeat: that's not the way forward, now is not the time.
I am willing to be called a traitor or a running dog, if only to give you this message: hold back your passions and show a gentle face, accept different voices. It's not yet the time time now.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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Carrefour's Chinese website at carrefour.com.cn appears to have been hacked, and currently displays an English message saying the site is down for maintenance (screen grab reproduced at left).
Over at carrefourS.com.cn however, things are live and jumping with nationalist messages. This is a translated version of the entire content of the site:
LONG LIVE CHINA!
THE RISE AND FALL OF A NATION DEPENDS ON EVERYONE OF YOU
Everyone please watch the video below (originally from QQ) to see our China's situation.
After you have watched it, don't be agitated, don't cry...
Take everything and turn it into struggle
2008 China stand up!
The video contains the usual recent complaints about the bias of the Western media, but also a healthy dose of Maoism, anti-imperialist rhetoric, and conspiracy theories about foreign capital manipulating Chinese markets. And a really portentous soundtrack. This article is from Danwei.org
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In 1996, a group of poets and publishers got together to write a book about national identity, international relations, the US as a global super-power, and liberal intellectuals whom they saw as too enamored with the west.
That book, China Can Say No: Political and Emotional Choices in the Post Cold War Era (中国可以说不——冷战后时代的政治与情感抉择), was a runaway bestseller and thrust a growing Chinese nationalism into the world media spotlight. "China says no" became a catchphrase repeated in subsequent anti-western episodes such as the protests in response to the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
Two of the book's authors recently took a look back at the "China can say no" phenomenon and the nature of Chinese nationalism in the past decade.
Writing for the November, 2007, issue of Soho Xiaobao, poet and publisher Zhang Xiaobo mused on how the exploration of Chinese identity makes itself known on the world stage:
What's so aggravating is that when we attempt to think this through and make our thoughts known, constrained as we are by the Chinese language, we become childish, stammering, and oblique, and it sometimes seems as if the entire nation gets stirred up over a particular prejudice, to the point that what the west sees is "an extremely poor performance."
In an interview with National History magazine, Song Qiang also reflects on how overheated passion and exuberance gave the writing in China Can Say No a rawer, cruder tone than if it had been written by sober academics. Although China Can Say No is scattershot—by design, it tried to take on all aspects of America's influence on China, from Congress to Hollywood to the news media—a few of the essays deal with issues that are current today. Teng Zhengyu writes about how China should respond to western media that continually try to "contain" China:
As for those voices and actions, the Chinese government should reject, balance, refute, or ignore them according to necessity. Only, it should not get tied up with those issues lest it delay its own forward progress.
The Chinese public, then, should take action. For example, not buying products from those countries is an effective way to contain those noisy voices and actions.
And when Song Qiang writes of Tibet in an early chapter, (Opening the window to wisdom), his dialogue with a foreigner goes much the same as recent conversations described by Zeng Pengyu (An argument out of exasperation) or the office worker in Germany (Encounters with a German).
 Students at Huiwen Middle School ( CFP) Alongside the Song Qiang interview, National History ran three photos: one of the protests against the Belgrade embassy bombing, in which demonstrator wore t-shirts emblazoned with a more dynamic adaptation of the book's title: "Today, the Chinese people say no!" The other two draw from a reference Song makes to Beijing's failed bid for the 2000 Olympics in September, 1993. One is simply of crestfallen faces in the Great Hall of the People, but the other (at right) illustrates how that failed bid was used to further patriotic feeling. The caption reads:
On 24 September, 1993, after Beijing's failed bid for the 2000 Olympics, Beijing Huiwen Middle School students rally on the athletic field wearing t-shirts that read "A people that can take a loss is one that truly has hope" (一个输得起的民族，才是真正有希望的民族).
Song discusses the genesis of the book, its immediate reaction, and his views on various nationalist episodes from the last decade:
Why Did China Say No?
by Guan Xin / NH
When China Can Say No was published in 1996, it became an immediate bestseller, attracting attention from more than 100 news agencies around the world and becoming that year's most sensational Chinese book in the west. It was seen as a sign that China's nationalist feelings were heating up.
The force of "saying no"
National History: Why did you all decide to do the book China Can Say No?
Song Qiang: People working in publishing have a strong sense of the surging tide of of popular opinion. The editor of this book was Zhang Xiaobo (under the pen name Zhang Cangcang). The year before, he had asked me about writing a book called "China Can Say No"; he had been working in publishing for quite a while at that time.
 China Can Say No When we wrote China Can Say No, we went about gathering material, and then finished it by describing experiences and telling stories. Publishing followed quickly once the writing was finished. One of the authors, Qiao Bian, was a poet who wrote of the sting that Beijing's failed bid for the 2000 Olympics had caused him in 1993. Qiao Bian's words explained what publishers like us and other young, thoughtful writers, who had had the same experience, were feeling, so we wrote our feelings and experiences into the book.
NH: How did you get together with Zhang Xiaobo, Qiao Bian, Gu Qingsheng, and Tang Zhengyu?
SQ: Zhang Xiaobo was a well-known urban poet in the 1980s. Huadong Normal University had a Summer Rain Poetry Club, and both Zhang and I wrote poety. He was three years ahead of me, but he and I talked fairly often. Gu Qingshen worked as a frelance writer, but I didn't know him personally. He was relatively familiar with the writing scene. Tang Zhengyu, who at the time was a reporter for the China Business Times and now works as editor of Beijing Youth Daily's securities section, was a good friend of Zhang Xiaobo's. There are two individuals with the pseudonym Qiao Bian, but the Qiao Bian who wrote for the book was Mo Fei, another poet. That made three of us who wrote poetry.
We didn't have much of a profit motive at the time; we all thought it was great fun and really stimulating to express our own viewpoints and write a book of arguments. We weren't formally organized, so we just went by whoever had the time. Ultimately it came down to articles by the five of us—that was how it went. I've said all along that the book would have had the same effect no matter who wrote it. It's not a question of who's a better writer; if a different group of authors were swapped in, it would have had the same influence.
NH: Before China Can Say No, there was a book called The Japan That Can Say No.* Did you read that book first and then model yours on it?
SQ: Finding conceptual inspiration is completely normal in the course of writing. The Japan That Can Say No was aimed at America and represented the will of the people of Japan. That book was a valuable reference in terms of concept and attitude. We had our own thinking and starting point for China Can Say No, and our intent diverged from that of the other book. Ours was definitely not derivative, but we did use it as a reference. This is normal, and it's a very common phenomenon in the design of mass-market books. Domestic mass-market books seldom used ideas from overseas, but we were able to do it, which proves that we were successful, at least from a business standpoint.
NH: What did you want to gain from this book?
SQ: First, throughout the process, each author had the intrinsic desire and passion to express his own opinions. But we did not rule out the prospect of fame and fortune.
 China Can Say No (revised) Second, basically none of the authors made a career out of "saying no." Qiao Bian and Gu Qingshen, for example, they didn't go off to be the editor of the commentary page at a newspaper, and they didn't use the book's influence as a their own platform. Everyone had a lot of choices for writing.
Third, as the book's editor, Zhang Xiaobo had said that he was sure that Sino-US books would be provocative to the public, so we didn't ignore the thought of commercial profit—this was a selling point. For me, writing this book was a good fit—I did it in my spare time. But we still approached it with the personality of men of letter: we had a desire to express ourselves. The situation later on, however, was not anything that we could control.
Fang Fang, a Wuhan-based author, appraised it as a "bookseller's book." That's hard to accept. Every author yearns to publish freely; we opened up an avenue for free publication—what's so strange about that? Essentially, at that time, lots of publications were done through secondary channels. One aspect of the 1990s was that people who were authors themselves—people who had writing chops, who had read tons of books, and who had a bit of influence—entered the publishing sector.
NH: How much time did you spend on this book, from conception to publication?
SQ: It was relatively quick. The idea came the previous year, but the real concept only arrived two months before publication. Zhang Xiaobo once said to me, let's write a book about China saying no. I said, OK, thinking that he meant a book about international relations. My idea was to say no to all the advertisements lining the streets, no to the culture of foreigner worship, no to the mentality of inferiority. Back then I had been influenced by Bo Yang's The Ugly Chinese.
NH: And the book was quite influential when it came out in May, 1996.
SQ: One effect the book had was to make "say no" one of the signature phrases of 1996, one of the most popular lines. The TV series The Story of the Editorial Office, which aired during the 1997 Spring Festival, parodied the book. Likewise, it stirred up nationalist feelings in the country that year. I received lots of letters, and some people even wrote me advocating setting up a nationalist association or alliance. By comparison, the intellectual world hid its disputes. But today, the argument between the New Left and Liberalism has come to the surface.
Someone at the State Council Information Office said that the book had influenced the west more than any other Chinese book in two decades. Foreign countries were interested and excited about what was happening in China, not whether China published a worthwhile book. The book became an event, a news item about the rise of Chinese nationalism, and this news item was used as the basis for describing the situation in China and reporting Chinese news. From this perspective, it was a highly influential book in the west.
Many domestic intellectuals opposed it. Wang Meng once said that some types of intelligence are short-lived. Southern Weekly began introducing the book in a full-page section, and shortly thereafter, their columnists launched a severe criticism of it. The mainstream domestic media was relatively objective in their reporting, but of course there were still lots of critical voices.
 China Can Say No (Hong Kong edition) NH: What overseas editions were there?
SQ: Hong Kong's Ming Pao group published a traditional-character edition aimed at the southeast Asia market. Yazhou Zhoukan's Hong Kong bestseller list placed it at #1 for dozens of weeks straight, with China Can Still Say No at #2. There were also Japanese and Korean editions, but no English edition. At the end of last year [2006], contacts in France were preparing a French edition. The Japanese edition was relatively influential—it sold very well. The traditional-character edition made up most of the sales in the US.
NH: After more than 10 years, how do you view China Can Say No? Is there anything that's worth revisiting?
SQ: I was 32 years old back then and wrote through my passion and exuberance—the sort of attitude that a young person ought to have. I wrote that book with true sincerity, and the important stuff still holds up. I can't say that it was my best writing, but the motivation was genuine. Criticize the book, but you can't look at it in isolation. We have no regrets about writing it; we have to protect our own points of view. Sure, we were hot-headed back then. We didn't check up on lots of things, and now we've paid the cost through criticism. It's impossible to explain correctly all of what we said, but we could adjust a bit of the rhetoric. When Shintaro Ishihara attacked us, his original words were that those young men were naive populists. But we definitely weren't naive populists here. Nevertheless, statements like "the Chinese are a mighty people," "Chinese virtues," "the sole motivation," and "the liberation of humanity" do indeed deserve reflection; I was the one who wrote lots of the stuff that pushed the limit. At the time, we basically wanted to "shock people or die trying," but as an attitude toward writing, it really is a little too flip.
NH: Three of the five authors of China Can Say No were poets. Did your work have a poetic flavor to it?
SQ: Poetry in China Can Say No? If you call all emotional expression "poetic," then you're insulting poetry. I have a great respect for poetry.
What sort of nationalism do we need?
NH: In the preface, you mentioned that the intellectuals of the 80s, including yourself, liked America, but that had changed by the 90s. Did something happen during that time to cause that change?
SQ: Qiao Bian once said that I had changed from a cosmopolitan to a nationalist, perhaps because international policies and things that happened on the world stage had caused me to see that the west was not as good as I had imagined. Common people, urban residents, and the fashionable classes may think that in foreign countries, everything is good. But we'd already had more than ten years of ideological freedom at that time, so wouldn't there be something if we maintained that same position?
Wang Xiaodong and Fang Ning did a survey in 1995 in which a large proportion of young people said that the country they hated most was America. This was one year before China Can Say No. The US authorities were a bit taken aback by this information. The appearance of a youth voice in China that hated the US, and the subsequent appearance of a voice saying "China can say no"—they said, hey, that can't be right. They imagined that more than 90% of Chinese youth could make up their own minds, and that there was no doubt they'd love America.
So we told the US embassy, what sort of people write the letters you receive? They're the Chinese who float in your circles. They were caught blind by this voice from the people—what had happened? In fact, Clinton once said that it was only after 1996 that he realized that China's domestic feelings deserved to be treated seriously. If the influence of China Can Say No were driven by the government, or if that 1995 survey was fabricated, then America would not have had any need to treat them seriously. So the fact that the book sent out that signal was a good thing, at least in the area of international relations: it gave them real information.
 Protesting the 1999 embassy bombing ( fotoe) NH: On 8 May, 1999, China's embassy in Yugoslavia was bombed. What was your reaction at the time?
SQ: When NATO invaded Yugoslavia, a few of my friends in academia talked with me about writing a book that would tell the truth about the world according to western eyes, but the embassy bombing had not yet occurred so I didn't pay it much attention.
The second day after the incident, Zhang Xiaobo, Mo Fei, Song Wei, and myself went to the US Embassy and saw people attacking it. When the crowds tried to breach the police line, I was standing practically in the first row, and I saw that the policed were highly experienced—they were able to hold all those people back and kept them from getting too extreme. That evening I went to the Peking University Triangle where students had convened.
At that time I was busily working on China's Road Under the Shadow of Globalization with Wang Xiaodong and Fang Ning. That book had been started the year before and all the manuscripts were in. I heard that a few pro-US professors at PKU were heart-broken at this unexpected turn of events—they wanted to cry but had no tears. People had embraced the west in a spirit of romanticism, but the west had kicked them down. An academic said to Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke that we ought to abandon ideology. Hawke's response was essentially that this individual's suggestion was mistaken; ideology is of prime importance in relations between countries.
Later, people said that China Can Say No was narrow nationalism that spurned common values. I read lots of books that made that case. So I asked, why is America immune from criticism? It seemed like the bottom line was this: criticizing America was tantamount to glorifying tyranny. Those were the circumstances that led to China's Road Under the Shadow of Globalization.
NH: You've said that China Can Say No sparked a fight between "liberalism" and "the new left." How did they view this book?
SQ: The liberal intellectuals I know are very nice people. They too are working for the good of the country, working on policy,Justin Li Yifu is a liberal economist, but he looked positively on the book. In Beijing at the time there was a magazine called Strategy and Management which devoted itself to "China and the US at the Turn of the Century." They didn't imagine that this book would come out so fast. After Fang Ning read the book, he found it was swifter, keener, and more influential than he had imagined. He had anticipated that this day would arrive. Their acknowledgement of the affair, of the book at that particular moment in time, didn't mean that the text itself was well-written or that it would stand up to careful scrutiny.
NH: What were you thinking during the anti-Japanese demonstrations of 2005?
SQ: I think that China's biggest enemy is America. Japan is relatively harmless, so it's easy to confuse things if you're anti-Japan. China is a poor country, but Japan and Korea have done things better than us: each move they've made has been carefully considered. A national attitude of prudence and self-protection is something that China lacks. I didn't take part in the demonstrations but I did sign my name. I said to Tong Zeng [defender of the Diaoyu Islands] that I was afraid that the anti-Japanese demonstrations would slip up and be exploited by the Americans.
China Youth Daily reported that a Japanese exchange student had posted online, saying: The "Chinamen" (支那人) don't have any warriors; the Yamato people are superior to the Chinese. When I first read that I thought it was fake. There was no source of stimulation inside the country, so why not make up a post by a Japanese exchange student to inflame the passions of the Chinese—then we'd all have something to do. This is taking things far too lightly. A few years later, people said that the post was a fake, something cooked up by a Chinese person. If you're anti-Japanese to such an extent, I'd say there's a problem.
NH: After the 9-11 incident in the US in 2001, some Chinese people felt that the bombing was a good thing. The magazine South Wind View (南风窗) published an article criticizing this view. What's your opinion of the issue?
SQ: I paid relatively close attention to 9-11; as human beings we all had a sense of terror. But I was really put off by the sort of grandstanding found in Tonight, We Sympathize With American. 9-11 took place in the richest place in America, but does anyone care that so many people die every year in Palestine? Wars in undeveloped countries have killed so many people—who cares about them? They aren't part of the core reporting of the mainstream media. I wish that we could all take an even look at these things. The Internet can misdirect people's judgment of information. Praise on the Internet for 9-11 can cause misdirection as well. Essentially, those were people who had no power in real life, but on the Internet they could really shine. Online stuff cannot stand in for public opinion. It's something exaggerated, and no matter how fierce it sounds, it cannot represent real life.
 China Can Say No (Japan edition) NH: What do you think of criticisms of nationalism that use terms like "angry youth" (愤青) and "patriotic traitors" (爱国贼)?
SQ: Given such extreme nationalism, it's only natural that nationalism gets criticized. I care about criticism because I'm not an important character. But China has really become a paradise of anonymity, and this concerns me. When it comes time to present evidence for state policy, governmental regulations, and judicial verdicts, must we also take seriously certain websites whose contents are deliberately shocking? If so, then we're in sorry state.
NH: In August, 2004, Huadong Normal University Press published the book Undercurrents: Criticisms and Reflections on Narrow-Minded Nationalism (潮流--对狭隘民族主义的批判与反思). What's your opinion of that book?
SQ: Actually, Hong Kong also published a book called How Should China Face the World (中国如何应对世界), which incorporated a few of those articles. It's a collection of articles from the past few years, and I'm not unfamiliar with their arguments. That book was quite influential, too. But to say that nationalism is an "undercurrent" that "obstructs the progress of history and runs counter to the reform and opening up" is something I don't agree with.
What is nationalism? What is ultra-nationalism? What is narrow nationalism? Can you equate nationalism with narrow nationalism or ultra-nationalism? In the west, nationalism is a cultural instinct. In the UK, if you say someone is British, he'll say he's a Scot. That's a form of nationalism, a person-centered nationalism. But in China, nationalism is defensive. That book says today's world is open, so China Can Say No is harmful. I don't know whether I'm a narrow nationalist. I'm in publishing, so it's a good thing for that sort of book to be published. It's a book that argues reasonably, but when scholars write papers they only look at one side of the issue; they pick out the points that are useful and brush aside the rest.
Undercurrents occupies a relatively liberal position. Liberalism is always attractive, but I am skeptical of whether it can help China at this point in time. China's rural intellectuals are liberals, something I think is only natural: people are innately inclined toward liberal democracy. But at this point in time, how to address nationalism and China's regional situation is not something that can be solved by hurling abuse at the Boxers.* We formed many mistaken ideas during the 20th Century, but if you simply equate nationalism with darkness, autocracy, and backwardness, I think you're being absurd.
NH: In Undercurrents, Xiao Xuehui of the Southwestern University for Nationalities writes, "After reading China Can Say No, I am amazed that a book so vulgar in tone, written in such coarse language, whose sentiment is mannered though its pages are full of ranting, was able to cause such an uproar." How do you view this sort of criticism?
SQ: Sometimes when academics go on the attack they'll load their writing with certain language. But this doesn't mean that I don't take her criticism seriously. This book was indeed fairly crude. Another criticism around the same time said that no concern for people could be found in the entire book, nor was there peace or hope. I said that a book can only carry out one mission; you can't ask every book to be completely well-organized, people-centered, and contain a dissection of international conflict. It's understandable for academics to use extreme language in their writing. I feel that if you write a book, you've got to pay the price for your words and take on a bit of criticism.
NH: Reportedly, there are civic groups like the Nationalist Alliance that want you all to play important roles. As the leading exponents of "saying no," why are you unwilling to participate?
SQ: I've said before, you can't eat patriotism. But you really can eat it, or make money off it. All of us authors have very broad areas of interest; for example, Gu Qingsheng writes excellent articles about cuisine, and Zhang Xiaobo's fiction has been highly praised. I myself am a poetry enthusiast and a writing enthusiast, dabbling in several different forms. I feel I'm still interested in writing, and that I could still write a best-seller. We aren't experts on that front. We wrote something, made if public, and that completed our mission. We have other things to do, things that will be much better than doing that, even though they may not be as influential. But everyone's life needs a focus. I don't even like reading stuff about international relations. A newspaper wanted me to head their commentary department, but I said, forget it, I don't write opinion pieces as well as Xue Yong and all those people, and I'm not really good enough at theory and policy.
 China Can Say No (another Japan edition) NH: Looking back now on the rise of nationalism in the 90s, what are your feelings?
SQ: Actually, in the 80s there was a general taking-stock, and there was a sort of nihilism or Eurocentrism. In the 90s, the authorities launched the great campaign to rejuvenate the nation. Nationalism's acknowledgment of its own national culture is highly significant. China is not too conservative or rigid; it is too fickle. I think that nationalism is something that leaves you in awe of life. I take a positive attitude toward nationalism.
NH: How does today's nationalism compare with that of the 90s—have there been changes, and have those been strong or weak? What sort of influence will nationalism have on China's future?
SW: I think that nationalism has become a type of force. There have been various ideological reactions, such as the attitude toward Japan, but nationalism has never obstructed China's reforms. The Chinese people, including young people, are not conservative, and they have naive, romantic notions of America. I think that we need a nationalist spirit to sweep in at any time to turn around China's future. For the nation-state is still one of the basic forms as the world is mad up; while the threatening international environment still remains undissolved, nationalism still has value in its existence, and has space to grow. In the future, nationalism will be a force for culture-building domestically, and will be on guard toward the outside, protecting the interests of its country.
Song Qiang keeps a blog, where he mainly makes food-related posts. In recent days, however, while he hasn't made many original posts on the Tibet, CNN, and Carrefour controversies, he's reposted old articles and commentary from other bloggers and pundits that oppose the liberal, anti-boycott crowd and make the case for patriotic demonstrations.
Song's still in publishing (he edited the online novel Four Walls for print), and most recently wrote the script for a Beijing TV retrospective on three decades of domestic television.
 Zhang Xiaobo from the back cover of A River That Each Day Drowns a Child (1996). Zhang Xiaobo, the general editor of China Can Say No who also contributed under the pen name Zhang Cangcang, is a poet and publisher. His first big splash was in 1992 when he obtained the mainland rights to the novels of Malaysian wuxia writer Wen Rui'an (though there's considerable controversy over misrepresentation and possible bootlegging surrounding that deal), and he later did the first authorized mainland editions of the Crayon Shin-chan manga series. In the same year as China Can Say No, he published A River That Each Day Drowns a Child (每天淹死一个儿童的河), a collection of intriguingly off-beat short stories.
In the November, 2007, issue of Soho Xiaobao, which asked various authors to reflect on the work that made them famous, Zhang wrote about China Can Say No in the context of the search for a Chinese identity:
One Country's Desire and Fear
by Zhang Xiaobo /SXB
I've just been reading a book about Franz Kafka in which the author (whose name I've forgotten) noted that because of his Austrian and Czech background, Kafka's "Jewishness" was keener than his countrymen, and that the literary themes throughout his short life were "desire & fear." The unification of these two themes formed a charm that split his life apart. Many years later, in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami used a battle of far-reaching significance (which has yet to make an impact on the Chinese psyche)—the Nomonhan Incident on the Sino-Mongolian border*—to investigate the makeup of "Japan-ness" and "Japaneseness." I am convinced that more than 90% of Chinese people know next to nothing of the massive battle between the Soviets and the Japanese that occurred on their own soil (Japan lost more senior officers than in any other battle in history), and I am also certain, though I have no evidence, that books on this war in Russia and Japan are definitely a sight to behold.
China-ness, on the other hand—or to go further, "Chineseness,"—was never put into a form that can be precisely and accurately expressed over the course of a century or more, and is still quite uncertain against the backdrop of modern times. However, though it has a different cause (China's tribulations and the sufferings of the Jewish people are of two different forms), there is nonetheless a double-sided "desire & fear" image in the history of this country. What's so aggravating is that when we attempt to think this through and make our thoughts known, constrained as we are by the Chinese language, we become childish, stammering, and oblique, and sometimes is seems as if a particular preconception can get the entire nation stirred up, to the point that what the west sees is "an extremely poor performance."
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