I’ve hastily thrown together the below video from the protests at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing today. Pictures and account are in my last post. In the video you see when it got a bit violent after some people started throwing rocks, and when I briefly talked with one of the rock throwers. Also has a bit where the crowd unexpectedly starts chanting “Fuck the USA.” Several of the other signs and chants are subtitled.
Video From Japanese Embassy Protests
Posted: September 15, 2012 in PoliticsTags: Beijing, Diaoyu Islands, Japanese embassy, protests
Comments
Sinostand 
[…] are lots pictures of the damage and a foreign reporter has posted an interesting account and video of the surprisingly large protests outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. It is hard to believe […]
Not too difficult to believe. There is a huge amount of pent up anger among the Chinese for a variety of issues…bad food, tainted milk, unsafe medication, shoddy buildings, corruption, low salaries, too many people, high and unfulfilled aspirations of owning a home, luxury goods, cars and other things to cause their anger, perhaps trumped up charges against Bo Xilai and Gu Kai lai and excessive consumption by the Fuerdai and Hongerdai The Chinese government then permits these huge outpourings of anger against an enemy like Japan to deflect the citizens’ attention from the deficiencies at home. Especially true on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on September 18.
If you can believe this, a six-year-old daughter of a Chinese friend came home after school last week and told her parents that her teacher told each student to tell their parents to destroy and throw out everything in their home that was made in Japan. The parents were mortified and when they tried to explain the situation to their daughter and that the “Hello Kitty” school bag, shoes and T-shirt she loved also came from Japan, only then, did the little girl relent.
Really? Stop projecting your own manifestations of what protests are about on a people you honestly do not understand.
[…] is a great video of the protests, via Sinostand, and below is a […]
[…] is a great video of the protests, via Sinostand, and below is a […]
On the upside, Chinese security forces have been getting extra training with riot control.
On the upside, Chinese people know what the F-word means now! Sweet! Onward, the march towards progress!!
“The parents were mortified and when they tried to explain the situation to their daughter and that the “Hello Kitty” school bag, shoes and T-shirt she loved also came from Japan, only then, did the little girl relent.”
Don’t forget that whizbang Walk-man device you just bought. That thing is crazy cool, but if you wanna support the great and powerful leader, you gotta let go of that space age tech too. Tsk. What a shame.
Easy to type (using pinyin anyway – the country’s name is one of the suspiciously CCP-friendly phrases that is on a macro) but damn awkward to say – the PRC needs a shorter name.
To the demonstrators in major Chinese cities (including the one I live in):
Congratulations!
You really showed them this time!
Exactly what did you show and to whom? Well, I’m not sure about that.
I wonder… Do you think that your actions during the last few days did have any effect except for blocking the traffic in your hometown and helping the CCP forgetting other – really important – issues? Do you seriously believe that burning cars (belonging to Chinese people who made the mistake of buying a Toyota instead of a Santana) or ransacking Japanese businesses (who provide jobs for Chinese people) is going to change the Japanese government’s mind? Do you think that Japanese fenqing nationalists are less adamant or fervent than you are? Do you seriously think that the Japanese government – any Japanese government – will commit political suicide by giving in over this territorial issue?
I’ve studied history and while all those books that I’ve read didn’t give me a satisfactory answer as to whether those “Fisher Islands” belong to one country or the other, they did teach me a few things, one of which is: no government will easily give up sovereignty over an area it already controls. So you better learn to face the facts – the same way Tibetans, Uighurs and other people have to face the fact that their homeland is part of China now. What do you think would happen if European people started discussions about what city or region should belong to what country based on some historical argument? That would be really good, wouldn’t it? That would really help us solve all the problems that mankind is facing in the 21st century, right?
Did you manage to make yourselves believe – for one second – that the Japanese people might be impressed by your throwing stones at their embassy in Beijing? What do you think Japanese people are doing right now? Do you think they are sitting in front of their TV sets watching the news and thinking: “Gosh, they are so angry, we have to give back control over the Senkaku islands to them?” Or is it possible that they are saying to themselves: “Look at those idiots! Now they are hurting their own people because they’re angry at us!”
Yeah, I guess, you don’t care what the Japs think. What about the rest of the world? What do you think is going on in the minds of American or European people who have only recently learned about the existence of the Diaoyu islands and might have agreed with you over this territorial issue, but now they are reading about attacks on innocent Japanese residents in China? Are they going to say: “They are attacking innocent people now, so they must be right!” or will it rather be: “What degenerate and morally depraved people are these? Are there many of those in China? Is it possible that the anti-China-crowd calling them ‘goons and thugs’ is not that far off the mark, after all?”
Let’s look at what you have achieved over the last few days:
– disrupted traffic in the centres of all major Chinese cities (which is bad enough on a normal workday)
– destroyed businesses that to you look Japanese, thereby increasing the number of jobless people in your own country
– caused lots of university students to be under house arrest because their deans want to prevent them from getting into harm’s way
– destroyed other (Chinese) people’s property, because they made the big mistake of appreciating the quality of Japanese products
– endorsed the prejudices Japanese nationalists have about Chinese people (“they’re all peasants who will hurt their own people just to vent their anger”)
– endorsed the prejudices American and European China-bashers have about your country (“they’re the same bunch of goons and thugs they always were”)
– made sure that the whole world knows that you are willing to hurt innocent people just to make a point about a few little islands that most of you couldn’t even find on a map
– and last not least helping the bastards who run (and ruin) this country divert attention from the really important issues
Well done! And again: Congratulations!
Mogera Uchidai