MCLC: social media support for boat attack

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: social media support for boat attack
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (5/27/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/wide-support-on-chinese-soci
al-media-for-boat-attack/

Wide Support on Chinese Social Media for Boat Attack
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

As news spread in China that a Chinese fishing boat had rammed and sunk a
Vietnamese fishing boat about 20 miles from a deep sea oil rig that China
has placed in waters contested by both countries, the reaction in social
media appeared overwhelmingly supportive — even bellicose.

Critical voices appeared to be censored, including one that sharply
criticized the Chinese Foreign Ministry, saying a comment it made about
Vietnam after the incident calling into question the country’s credibility
was “beneath the dignity” of a major power. But most commentators whose
opinions were permitted to remain online by China’s tens of thousands of
censors in the police and Internet companies, seemed excited by the action.

“Chinese fishermen are mighty! There are still heroes among the people!”
wrote a person with the online handle Hou Ning on his Sina Weibo account.
According to Vietnamese accounts, the 10 fishermen aboard the boat that
sank on Monday were all rescued.

Other social media sites also showed support for the action of the Chinese
boat, such as on the popular Phoenix, or ifeng, bulletin board
<http://comment.ifeng.com/view.php?docUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ifeng.com%2Fa%2
F20140526%2F40465866_0.shtml&docName=>. “This finally shows some
backbone,” wrote a commenter in Hubei Province, garnering more than 6,600
thumbs-up signs.

The top-ranking comment on ifeng.com, with nearly 13,000 thumbs-up, from
someone in Beijing with the handle Smog in the Imperial Capital, suggested
that the Chinese were only doing to the Vietnamese what others have done
to the Chinese.

“South Korea detains Chinese fishermen. Japan detains Chinese fishermen,”
the person wrote. “Russia attacks them with cannons. A Chinese fishing
boat rams and sinks a Vietnamese fishing boat, hahahahahahaha.”

China and Vietnam fought a brief but bloody war in 1979 that Vietnam won.
But many Chinese regard Vietnam as a minor southern nation that, they say,
was once a Chinese province.

Many commentators approvingly forwarded a statement by the Chinese Foreign
Ministry that Vietnam’s credibility in the international community was
“very low.”

But one comment posted on Sina Weibo was sharply critical of the Foreign
Ministry statement 
<http://www.china.org.cn/china/Off_the_Wire/2014-05/26/content_32496545.htm
, saying relations between states should be conducted with greater
courtesy. That comment was censored, according to Freeweibo
<https://freeweibo.com/weibo/3714761755857853>, an overseas-hosted website
that gathers such censored comments.

Speaking of the statement by Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on
Monday, a person named Duan Wanjin, who said he was a lawyer and whose
account had a “V” for verified, indicating he had been approved by Sina
Weibo, said the Chinese government was behaving in a way unbecoming of a
great power.

“Territorial disputes are something that should be talked about, and one
shouldn’t humiliate another country,” he wrote in the censored comment. “A
country’s whose pattern” of foreign relations “is too small will find it
hard to rise, unless China has decided it wants to make its relations with
Vietnam like those between the United States and North Korea.”

“Today the Foreign Ministry is flooded with clowns who only want to
ingratiate themselves with the leaders. There isn’t the slightest bit of
Confucian culture exerting any uplifting influence of refinement. It’s
just all ruffians. The gateway to the country is in a sad state.”

But many other commentators approved of scorning Vietnam: “I think the
best way to frighten Vietnam is to attack Japan. Kill the monkey to scare
the chicken,” wrote a person with the online handle The Ninth Number on My
Identity Card Is Eight.

The phrase neatly turns around a Chinese saying that one should “kill the
chicken to scare the monkey” — that is, frighten one’s real enemy by
attacking a lesser one. The reversal both threatens and humiliates
Vietnam, by suggesting it is a lesser nation.

The central notion of a master-servant relationship between China and
Vietnam also featured elsewhere: “Originally Vietnam was a prefecture of
China, today you are independent. Take good care of yourself and that’s
enough, how dare you act rashly!”

Also on Tuesday, the state news agency Xinhua reported
<http://news.163.com/air/14/0527/08/9T86DH7500014PHJ.html> that direct
flights that had begun on May 18 from Tianjin, a major city near Beijing,
to Danang, a coastal destination in Vietnam, had been indefinitely
suspended “because of the influence of the situation on the ground.”

The Vietnamese authorities had offered Chinese citizens a visa on landing
in Danang to facilitate tourism, said the report, which described Danang
as “not inferior to the Maldives,” a major Chinese holiday destination.

Referring to the boat incident, the latest development in a growing
territorial conflict over the South China Sea, Haoshuai De Ba from Sichuan
Province wrote on ifeng.com’s bulletin board: “A new phase is beginning…
get ready for it….”

More than a thousand people gave that the thumbs-up.