MCLC: wave of nationalism

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: wave of nationalism
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5/25/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/asia/wave-of-chinese-nationalism-as
-communist-leadership-change-looms.html

NEWS ANALYSIS
Before China’s Transition, a Wave of Nationalism
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — As an English-speaking talk show host on China Central
Television, Yang Rui likes to think of himself as a bridge between East
and West.

He has a soft spot for tweed newsboy caps and Sherlock Holmes-style pipes
and takes pride in his communications degree from Cardiff University in
Wales. He may exult in China’s growing might, but made sure his son
attended college in the United States. His program on the state-run CCTV,
“Dialogue,” often includes both foreign and Chinese guests.

“I have to remind myself that I’m not representing myself,” he once
remarked. “I’m representing the image of a country.”
But this week Mr. Yang revealed another side of his persona in a torrent
of microblog messages that derided some foreigners as “trash” and accused
Western men of seducing local women in an effort to spy on China.

“The Ministry of Public Security must clean out foreign trash, arrest
foreign thugs and protect innocent girls,” he wrote to his 820,000
followers. “Behead the snakeheads, the unemployed Americans and Europeans
who come to China to make money, traffic in people and mislead the public
by encouraging them to emigrate.”

Mr. Yang’s comments aggravated what many residents from abroad say is an
increasingly palpable rush of antiforeign hostility that often quietly
coexists, paradoxically, alongside effusive admiration for the West. Two
ugly situations involving foreigners have helped stoke the antipathy.

In one, a Russian-born cellist with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra was
captured on video using boorish language to attack a fellow train
passenger who objected to him putting his bare feet on her seat. Despite a
videotaped apology, he was fired this past week.

The more serious case involved a drunken British tourist apparently
sexually assaulting a Chinese woman on a Beijing street. The video, also
posted on the Internet, showed a group of passers-by pummeling the man
into unconsciousness.

In the days that followed, the police in Beijing announced a 100-day
campaign to rid the country of foreigners who are living or working in
China illegally. The initiative, promoted through banners and articles in
the state news media, encourages citizens to report those suspected of
violating the law to the authorities.

Whether coincidental or not, the campaign dovetails with a fusillade of
attacks in the state news media. Xinhua, the state-run news agency, ran an
editorial at the top of its home page last week that accused other
governments of using reporters from their countries to “tactically
control” China’s image in the overseas news media.

On Friday, People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party mouthpiece and a
political weather vane, described Western efforts to export democracy and
human rights to China as a new form of colonialism. “They are evil acts
that would harm society,” the article said.

Analysts suggest the rising nationalist sentiment may be related to a
spate of events that have unnerved the Chinese leadership, including
territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a sharply slowing domestic
economy and the political turmoil prompted by the downfall of the populist
up-and-comer Bo Xilai. Mr. Bo, accused of corruption and violating party
discipline, is in detention and awaiting his fate, as is his wife, Gu
Kailai, who is implicated in the death of a British businessman. The
backdrop for these uncertainties is the once-a-decade change in leadership
scheduled for later this year.

While the party has in the past stirred the nationalist caldron during
times of uncertainty, some analysts said they thought that following that
script today could prove harmful to China when it is trying to burnish its
soft power.

“It doesn’t help the party’s image to be retaliating against foreigners
during the leadership transition,” said Bo Zhiyue, a Chinese political
analyst at the East Asian Institute of the National University of
Singapore. “I find the whole campaign puzzling.”

The upshot has been a host of inconveniences for those with foreign
passports. In recent weeks, scores of scholars and tourists have had their
visa applications rejected by Chinese embassies around the world. In
Beijing, foreign journalists are on tenterhooks, wondering whether the
expulsion this month of an American correspondent for Al Jazeera is a
taste of things to come.

(Mr. Yang, the CCTV host, for one, has called for a crackdown on
journalists who “demonize” China. He also cheered the departure of the
Jazeera reporter, Melissa Chan, with a word that could be charitably
translated as “shrew.” Mr. Yang did not respond to requests for comment.)

On Friday night, a phalanx of three dozen officers made the rounds of
Sanlitun, a neighborhood popular with foreigners. After checking passports
at a Mexican restaurant, the officers could be seen leading away an
African patron.

Western culture has also taken something of a hit. A joint
Chinese-American jazz training program scheduled for June was canceled
over “visa issues.” Last weekend, the police cited a missing permit when
they forced the sudden cancellation of the musical “Oklahoma!” — which was
largely cast with non-Chinese and partly financed by the United States
Embassy. Desperate organizers found a new location but at substantial
cost.  The Philadelphia Orchestra, which performs next week at the
National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing, has been dismayed to find
many of its Chinese corporate sponsors inexplicably backing out at the
last minute.

“We’re used to periodic crackdowns, but the atmosphere for foreigners
seems to be more hysterical than in the past,” said Jeremiah Jenne, an
American researcher and history professor in Beijing who maintains the
blog Granite Studio <http://granitestudio.org/>. “This time feels
different, because people are being encouraged to dial in and report their
neighbors.”

In addition to the consternation and hand-wringing, foreign residents have
expressed bewilderment over the rapid shift in public sentiment. It is a
seesawing of emotion that can veer from the worshipful to the venomously
resentful.

Those conflicting impulses have deep roots. When the British statesman
Earl Macartney arrived in China in the late 18th century seeking trading
concessions, he was politely rebuffed by the Qianlong emperor, who thought
China was sufficiently wealthy and cultured. In the century that followed,
as coastal China was carved up by foreign powers, educated Chinese began
wondering whether their civilization might be inherently inferior to that
of the West. In the first half of the 20th century, the tensions between
those advocating Chinese self-reliance and those seeking modernization
through opening up to the West were a frequent source of strife.

Mao Zedong and his Communist Revolution sought to put an end to any
lingering self-doubt by banishing most foreign residents — and Western
notions of human rights and electoral democracy. The next three decades,
which brought famine, political upheaval and economic stagnation, turned
out to be disastrous for liberal thinkers.

Hong Huang, an entrepreneur who was one of the few Chinese to study in the
United States during the peak of xenophobia in the 1970s, says many
Chinese were confused by the sudden change in official attitude that
followed the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Once branded as
enemies of the people, foreigners were placed on a pedestal in the 1980s,
when Beijing was eager to court Western expertise and capital. In those
days, she recalled, foreigners used special currency to shop at
well-stocked Friendship Stores and stayed in hotels that were off limits
to Chinese.

“The government made people feel like second-class citizens in their own
country and inadvertently created these feelings of massive insecurity,”
said Ms. Hong, whose mother taught English to Mao and whose stepfather was
foreign minister. “When you have this kind of insecurity, it doesn’t take
much for people to turn uncontrollably emotional.”

More recently, many Chinese have come to feel maligned by the West despite
the marked contrast between the robust growth in China, even if at a
slower pace, and the economic frailties of Europe and the United States.

But apart from the enviable achievements, there is a simmering sense among
educated Chinese that something is missing. The self-doubts are fed by
corruption, censorship and the widening gap between the haves and
have-nots. Even with their weakened economies, Western countries — with
their rule of law and sense of security — still have an enduring appeal
when contrasted to the vagaries of authoritarian rule.

Dai Qing, a dissident writer who often criticizes the Communist Party,
said those long-buried frustrations were awakened when ordinary Chinese
saw official favoritism toward foreigners, but felt their own government
was unresponsive. “If a Japanese tourist has his bicycle stolen, an entire
city department will work around the clock to retrieve it,” she said.
“They would never do that for a Chinese person.”

Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting, and Mia Li, Owen Guo and Zhang
Wei contributed research.