China and Japan
Page 57
Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto met in Tokyo and signed the Japan- U.S. Joint
Declaration on Security Alliance for the Twenty- First Century, China be-
came more confident that the Japa nese military would not become in de-
pen dent, at least in the near future. The Joint Declaration stated that both
the United States and Japan had an interest “in furthering cooperation with
China.” But Chinese officials, aware of Western concern about the rise of
China, suspected that the declaration was aimed at containing China.
During the fol owing year, the United States and Japan revised the guidelines
that included Japa nese participation in “the areas surrounding Japan,” causing
the Chinese to worry about Japan’s activities around the Senkaku / Diaoyu
Islands and Taiwan.
China’s Patriotic Education Campaign
After Chinese leaders put down the Tian anmen Square protests, they had
reason to worry about whether they could retain the support of Chinese
youth. Two years later, observing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
and the end of communism in Eastern Eu rope, Chinese leaders could not
help wondering if China might confront a similar fate. How were China’s
leaders to respond? Deng Xiaoping de cided the answer was to launch a Pa-
triotic Education Campaign aimed at strengthening loyalty to the nation,
especially among Chinese youth.
During the Civil War, Mao called for class strug gle, stoking the an-
tagonism of peasants and workers toward landlords and cap i tal ists, to win
. 365 .
china and japan
popu lar support against the Guomin dang. As late as 1966–1976 during the
Cultural Revolution, Red Guards were mobilized to attack those with “bad
class backgrounds”— that is, landlords and the bourgeoisie. But with the
reform and opening of 1978, Chinese leaders encouraged in de pen dent busi-
nesses and sought cooperation with cap i tal ist countries. To proceed with
their modernization plans, they also sought the support of the best and the
brightest of China’s youth, some of whom had come from bad class back-
grounds, as well as the support of businesspeople in Taiwan, including fol-
lowers of Chiang Kai- shek.
The Chinese media did not call attention to the end of class strug gle,
but by the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1987, publicity about class strug gle
had faded away and attacks on those from bad class backgrounds had ended.
Chiang Kai- shek, who had been criticized for supporting the cap i tal ists and
landlords, was praised for his contributions to the nation. Museums that
displayed ancient pottery no longer posted signs saying that the artifacts
had been made by the working classes who had suffered from oppression.
The pottery had been made by Chinese artisans.
In 1992, the way to win broad support for both the government and the
Chinese Communist Party was through patriotism—by recalling and cel-
ebrating the strug gle of all Chinese people, of all classes and of all minority
groups, against the foreign imperialists who had invaded China. The media
denounced the imperialists who oppressed the Chinese during what China
called the “ century of humiliation,” beginning with the Opium War and con-
tinuing through the Japa nese invasion and the atrocities committed by the
Japa nese during the war.
The appeal to patriotism had deep roots among twentieth- century Chi-
nese po liti cal leaders seeking broader public support. The Patriotic Educa-
tion Campaign, first introduced in 1992, made use of not only print media
but also TV, the new medium of the day, which had become widespread in
the 1980s. The campaign had begun with an announcement in August 1991
and instructions that every school in China was to have a well- developed
patriotic curriculum within three years. New middle- school and high- school
textbooks began appearing in 1992. In September 1993, when Beijing lost
to Sydney in its bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, students
throughout the country were mobilized to stage protests. After denouncing
government officials for their actions in 1989, students were now cheering
. 366 .
The Deterioration of Sino- Japanese Relations, 1992–2018
the government officials who complained about the biases of the foreign
countries that blocked Beijing’s effort to host the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Patriotic education was working.
The Patriotic Education Campaign was fully launched in August 1994,
with directions for implementing the campaign issued by the Central Com-
mittee of the Communist Party. Among the announced goals was the en-
hancement of cohesion and national pride. After 1994, ju nior and se nior
high- school students were required to take courses on patriotism, and all
students applying to university had to take entrance examinations that
tested their knowledge of the content of the patriotic education courses.
Chinese discussions of Japan’s past atrocities and Japan’s failure to apol-
ogize adequately were central components of the Patriotic Education
Campaign. In the 1980s, following Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to build a cul-
tural base for better relations with Japan, Chinese audiences had been shown
movies that displayed many sides of Japan, but after 1992 the Chinese media
paid more attention to subjects such as the Nanjing Massacre, Japan’s bio-
chemical warfare, the atrocities committed by Japa nese soldiers carry ing out
the scorched- earth policy known as “kill all, burn all, loot all,” and Japan’s
exploitation of “comfort women” to satisfy the sexual desires of soldiers.
In November 1993 the Publicity (formerly Propaganda) Department of
the Chinese Communist Party issued a circular promoting patriotism
through movies and tele vi sion series. By that time, China already had some
230 million tele vi sion sets. Patriotic tele vi sion series and movies about the
Sino- Japanese War typically depicted Japa nese soldiers committing cruel-
ties and Chinese soldiers, Communist guerrilla fighters, and Chinese youths
heroically fighting the Japa nese enemy. Of all the themes for stirring patri-
otism, none proved as popu lar as World War II movies showing the hor-
rible deeds of Japa nese soldiers. Some of the movies designed for young au-
diences showed Chinese children bravely helping to fight the Japa nese. In
2000, one such movie, Dev ils at the Doorstep, was banned from circulation
because it showed a Japa nese soldier being too friendly to Chinese villa gers.
Many such commercial films were very popu lar and financially profitable.
The 2011 film Flowers of War, depicting the Japa nese raping Chinese women
and slicing up Chinese corpses with swords during the Nanjing Massacre,
was the highest grossing film of the year. Nevertheless, some of the com-
mercial movies were ridiculed by Chinese intellectuals for their unrealistic
. 367 .
china and japan
exaggerations. In one film, for instance, a Chinese boy throws a hand grenade
that destroys a Japa nese plane. Since 1993 Chinese moviegoers and TV
viewers have had ample opportunities to view movies depicting
the horrible
Japa nese and the heroic Chinese.
The anniversary of the Japa nese invasion of Manchuria on September 18,
1931, and National Humiliation Day, remembering when China was forced
to yield to the Twenty- One Demands on May 9, 1915, became occasions for
mobilizing anti- Japanese sentiment. On August 15, 2005, the sixtieth anni-
versary of the end of World War II, China saw very large anti- Japanese dem-
onstrations. The Chinese expressed outrage any time high Japa nese po liti cal
leaders visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of class- A war criminals
were enshrined among the 2.5 million others who died for their country.
In 1994, Chinese local governments were directed to erect monuments
and museums commemorating the anti- Japanese strug gles of the Chinese
people. Museums mounted displays showing heroic Chinese people fighting
the Japa nese. They built monuments marking the battles that had taken
place, and held commemorations at the gravesites of Chinese heroes in the
war with Japan. Forty national sites, which also involved foreign countries,
were selected in 1995 to promote patriotic education, half of which were sites
involving the Japa nese. Many people remembered the horror stories about
life after the 1931 Japa nese invasion and could easily be enlisted to help ed-
ucate China’s young people. According to data collected by the Pew Research
Center, by 2006 only 21 percent of Chinese people had favorable impres-
sions of Japan, and by 2016 that number had fallen to 14 percent.2
To strengthen patriotic sentiment among China’s well- educated readers,
one of the most effective means was the publication Cankao Xiaoxi (Refer-
ence News), which prints Chinese translations of articles from the foreign
press. This newspaper was formerly available only to party members, but
beginning in the 1980s it was openly sold on the streets. Because the arti-
cles were direct translations from foreign media, it became a favorite source
of news for the educated public, including students. By selecting the head-
lines as well as the articles that were published, propaganda officials could
shape the messages that they wanted to reach the Chinese public. Officials
chose articles by extreme right- wing Japa nese who denied historical events,
even if those rightists were not well known and considered ridicu lous by
. 368 .
The Deterioration of Sino- Japanese Relations, 1992–2018
most people in Japan, Cankao Xiaoxi readers in China assumed they repre-
sented the general Japa nese mood. The Chinese public therefore came to
overestimate the extent to which the Japa nese public denied certain his-
torical events. Even though Japa nese military expenditures did not in-
crease significantly after 1990, the articles selected for reprinting by Cankao
Xiaoxi conveyed the impression that rising militarism in Japan was a se-
rious prob lem.
Some of the strongest expressions of anti- Japanese sentiment since the
mid-1990s have come not from the elder Chinese generation that had ex-
perienced the Japa nese occupation but from young people who had received
a patriotic education. By 1998, Chinese children could play popu lar video
games online in which heroic Chinese characters fought against Japa nese
invaders. The Patriotic Education Campaign was quite effective in increasing
anti- Japanese attitudes.
China’s Patriotic Education Campaign also helped strengthen anti-
Japanese public opinion in other countries that had suffered under the
Japa nese during the war, particularly Korea and Southeast Asia. The cam-
paign found resonance as well in Western countries, where what China criti-
cized as Japan’s failure to apologize fully for its actions in World War II
was contrasted with the Germans’ thorough self- criticism for their nation’s
war time atrocities.
In Japan, the Ministry of Education provides guidelines for the mate-
rial school textbooks should cover, and the requirements for Japa nese text-
books give little space to modern history. Thus when Chinese youth, who
have received China’s patriotic education, meet Japa nese youth, they com-
monly conclude that while Japa nese students may know that it was
wrong for Japan to invade China and that Japan should apologize, they have
little knowledge of Japan’s past aggression and have not sufficiently faced
their history.
When Japa nese visitors to China saw the anti- Japanese movies being
shown, and Japa nese TV viewers saw dramatic images of Chinese people
throwing rocks at Japa nese shops in China and the Japa nese ambassador’s
residence in Beijing without police restraint, and Chinese planes and ships
buzzing Japa nese planes and ships near the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands, the
Japa nese became fearful about China. The strong commitment in Japan to
. 369 .
china and japan
pacifism and antimilitarism has not dis appeared, but the news from China
has strengthened nationalist sentiment in Japan, especially among a mi-
nority right- wing fringe. Many Japa nese fear a Chinese threat and have a
sense that the Japa nese living today are the victims of false accusations.
By the mid-1990s the number of Japa nese tourists to China began to
fall off sharply. Pew data from a survey in 2006 revealed that the number
of Japa nese who expressed positive feelings toward China had dropped to
27 percent. By 2016 it had fallen further to 11 percent where it remained
even in 2017 and 2018, when the number of Chinese respondents reporting
positive feelings toward Japan rose to nearly 40 percent from a low of
10 percent. The numbers of Japa nese visitors to China did not rise.
The growing tensions between China and Japan after 1992 coincided
with the growing confidence in China, and the corresponding fear in Japan,
that the size of the Chinese economy would soon surpass that of Japan, and
that the size of China’s military and its weaponry would also soon surpass
Japan’s.
China Takes the Dominant Position in Asia
In 1993 China’s GNP was still only $443 billion, whereas Japan, with one-
tenth of China’s population, had a GNP of $4.4 trillion, almost ten times
as large. But that same year China’s economy grew by 14 percent and seemed
poised to continue growing at a rate of more than 10 percent a year, while
the Japa nese economy was by then stagnating, after the bubble burst in 1989.
After 1997, when Japan suffered in the Asian financial crisis and China did
not, Chinese officials were confident that their economic and po liti cal sys-
tems were working better than Japan’s. China’s entry into the World Trade
Organ ization (WTO) in 2001 further boosted Chinese confidence.
China had acquired nuclear weapons in 1965 and Japan had chosen not
to develop them, but in 1993 the Japa nese military, though small, was supe-
rior to China’s in terms of technology and training. Beginning in 1996, how-
ever, Chinese military spending began growing even faster than its
economy, while Japan’s military expenditures remained below 1 percent of
its stagnating economy. The Chinese gained
confidence that they would
soon have more warships and warplanes than Japan. By 2015, although Japa-
nese military specialists believed their military training and technology
. 370 .
The Deterioration of Sino- Japanese Relations, 1992–2018
were still ahead of China’s, Chinese naval tonnage was 3.2 times that of
Japan, China had 2.7 times the number of aircraft, and it had 260 ballistic
missiles whereas Japan had none.3
The year 2008 was an impor tant milestone for China’s growing confi-
dence, when China was little affected by the global financial crisis that shook
Japan and the West. In 2008 the Japanese stock market index fell to less
than one-fifth of its peak in 1989. Chinese and Japa nese leaders already knew
that China’s economy would soon surpass that of Japan, and the Western
financial crisis further strengthened the belief of the Chinese that their
system was as good as the economic systems in the West. Just as the Tokyo
Olympics of 1964 had symbolized Japan’s debut as a modern industrialized
country, and the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 represented South Korea’s
debut on the world stage, so the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing,
presented with a grandeur beyond any previous games, served as China’s
debut as a major global power that was surpassing Japan and poised to begin
challenging the United States. Two years later, in August 2010, Tokyo an-
nounced that in the second quarter of 2010, according to World Bank fig-
ures, China’s GNP was $1.38 trillion and Japan’s GNP was $1.28 trillion.
After 2010 China still faced many prob lems—in completing its mod-
ernization throughout the country, in helping residents who had not yet
achieved a middle- class standard of living, in creating a social ser vice net for
the entire population, in making the transition to a consumer- oriented ser-
vice economy, and in constructing a world- class high- technology sector.
However, the century of humiliation was over and China was no longer
daunted by the achievements of the West.
The difficulties between China and Japan in managing the transition in
their relationship were exacerbated by the instability of Japan’s po liti cal lead-
ership from 1994 to 2012. Chinese leadership during this period was rela-
tively stable: President Jiang Zemin was formally selected for two terms,