A series of anti-Japan demonstrations broke out in more than a dozen Chinese cities on Aug. 20, 2012. Protesters not only targeted Japanese businesses, but also Japanese-made vehicles on the road.
One of the “little pinks” (小粉紅), a term used to refer to young Chinese nationalists, found his Japanese-made car damaged after participating in a demonstration. The photograph in which he wept by his car while holding a Chinese national flag in his hands went viral online.
Little pinks drove Japanese-made vehicles to join an anti-Japan rally. They belittled the East Asian nation as “little Japan” and yet could not wait to travel to the country to shop as much as they could.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the dual and yet contradictory nature of little pinks’ love-hate relationship with Japan.
They are well aware that Japan surpasses China in terms of technology and economy, but sentimentally, they hate Japan as they have been brainwashed to since they were children.
The Chinese Communist Party regime has a long history of incorporating anti-Japanese sentiment in their education system, focusing on the Sino-Japanese War and incidents in which Chinese were harmed by Japanese soldiers, while also promoting anti-Japan television dramas.
Against this background, some people believe there is “nothing wrong” with damaging Japanese vehicles. Some officials believe Japanese children “deserve” to be killed and some believe that those who visit brothels in Japan are “patriotic” in a perverted way.
The Chinese government has reacted with coldness and passiveness over the fatal stabbing of a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen this month, the second attack on a Japanese national this year.
A Chinese influencer vandalized Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million war dead, including convicted war criminals, and which China considers a symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism.
Chinese warplanes and warships have in the past few months entered Japan’s territorial airspace and its waters, an incursion into Japanese territory.
Beijing has also banned Japanese seafood imports under the guise of protecting people’s health, although it recently announced it would lift that ban.
These incidents have catalyzed Chinese people’s euphoric mood, which in turn disgusts Japanese society.
Sunday was the 52nd anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan relations. On the same day two years ago, the BBC described the two countries as “blowing hot and cold” on their relations. Radio France Internationale reported that there has been an “ebb and flow” and “contradictions” in the two countries’ interactions throughout the years.
Such descriptions underline the duplicity of China’s love-hate relationship with Japan.
The China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing’s Chaoyang District was designated a tertiary A-level hospital years after it was built with Japanese support in 1984. In 2015, the hospital was abbreviated as China-Japan Hospital. Different versions have been given for the reason the name was abbreviated to remove the word “friendship.”
Now that China is no longer friendly to Japan, it is reasonable for Japan to “reciprocate.” The development of the two countries’ relations is worth contemplating.
Yu Kung is a Taiwanese entrepreneur working in China.
Translated by Fion Khan
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot