Xenophobia and anti-Japanese sentiment in China

A recent attack and death of a Japanese schoolboy has raised questions about xenophobia in China. Is this the action of a fringe minority, or a sign of a larger problem?

“We will not hate China, nor will we hate Japan. Regardless of nationality, we consider both countries our own. While customs and cultures may differ, we know better than anyone that at our core, we are all the same. Therefore, I do not wish for the actions of a few vile individuals with twisted minds to harm the relationship between the two nations. My only wish is that such a tragedy never happens again.”

So writes the father of a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy who was stabbed to death on his way to school on 19th September. The heartfelt letter has been scrubbed from the Chinese net, but is still available in translation in some places. Its short but poignant message highlights an ongoing issue over China-Japan relations, and how political tensions between the two nations play out at a social level.

SCMP is quick to dispel any notion that the perpetrator of the attack had any grander political points to make, pointing out that he “has a criminal record and no steady employment” – just your typical ne'er do well, nothing to see here. They make no comment on the fact that the incident took place on the anniversary of the Mukden Incident, a false flag bombing by the Japanese military in 1931 that served as their justification for the invasion of Manchuria, where they set up a puppet government that reigned in the region till the end of the Second World War.

The Japanese embassy in China has warned citizens to practise vigilance among what appears to be rising tensions and increasing anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese citizens. In June, a mother and her child were among a group of people attacked, and though they were protected by a Chinese man, the incident still prompted the Japanese government to hire security guards for Japanese students. Some Japanese companies with locations in China have offered to recall expats.

Chinese government officials have called these ‘isolated incidents’, hesitant to draw a link between these and other attacks on foreigners that may paint the Chinese public as hostile to outsiders, or downright xenophobic. They may also be hesitant to draw a line between their own rhetoric and the behaviour of the public in response to their words. If we ask how tensions have risen to such levels, will all roads lead back to the CCP? What is the state of xenophobia in China, and how has it shifted over the past decade? And is there no coming back from the precipice?

Nationalism and insecurity

Before we jump into Sino-Japanese relations, I feel like a brief word on Chinese nationalism is necessary. Any hostilities towards foreign entities naturally stem from insecurities back home, and xenophobia towards Japanese expats in China – no matter how ‘isolated’ – are a symptom of this insecure nationalism. Analyses of the development of modern Chinese nationalism are replete with overtones of this self-consciousness:

“Chinese nationalism is powered by a narrative of China’s century of shame and humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers and calls for the Chinese government to redeem the past humiliations and take back all ‘lost territories’. China’s increasingly muscular foreign policy behavior in defense of its so-called core national interests during the recent territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas has fed a roiling sense of anxiety in many political capitals about whether a virulent nationalism has emerged to drive China’s foreign policy in a more irrational and inflexible direction”

These feelings of shame and loss not only embolden the party-state, but also the citizens of China:

“While the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by the emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become increasingly reluctant to constrain the expression of popular nationalism and more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls for confrontation against the Western powers and its neighbors, including the repeated use of paramilitary forces, economic sanctions, fishing and oil ventures, and other intimidating means, to deal with territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas”

Nationalism in general “largely takes shape in opposition to the other,” and for China, Western imperialists and their Asian allies are ‘them’ to China’s ‘us’. They are necessary to the formation of Chinese identity, particularly under Xi Jinping, where China’s rise rubs up against established powers in the economic and political fields, of which Japan is a major player. But China – the CCP – cannot do without the success of the country’s economic rise, which in turn is reliant on globalisation: “Globalisation supports China’s economic rise. In turn, economic rise supports China’s nationalistic goals. And a successful nationalism engenders legitimacy to the CCP. The CCP’s legitimacy, in turn, determines the sustainability and durability of the Chinese state.”

The feeling of wanting to safeguard and justify China’s rise, coupled with the pain stemming from years of international humiliation, can and has led to the development of ugly strains of nationalism that project onto external bodies. So how does Japan figure into this?

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Japan relations

Hostilities towards Japan and Japanese people did not spring from nowhere, of course. As already mentioned, Japan invaded China just before the outbreak of WWII, and committed numerous atrocities including the infamous Nanjing Massacre 1937, the details of which are too horrifying to be laid out here. Over the course of the war, Japanese continued to terrorise and torment the Chinese population until they were driven out of the country in 1945.

Unlike the forgiveness Japan has seemingly bestowed upon the US following the two nuclear bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima – which killed roughly 200,000 people, made those places unliveable, and turned survivors into an pseudo-untouchable class – Japan has received no such grace from China. Just this July, a Chinese man desecrated the Yasukuni Shrine, which serves as a memorial to those Japanese who died at war, and serves as a consistent sore point for China. It’s safe to say that China has not forgotten the suffering of its people at the hands of the Japanese – nor is it allowed to forget.

The current education system in China teaches children “not just about the Rape of Nanjing but numerous other Japanese war crimes” which numerous Japanese politicians have criticised as being too anti-Japanese. Every year there is a memorial to the victims of the Nanjing Massacre on December 13th, and the Nanjing Memorial is the most popular history museum in China, receiving roughly five million visitors each year since 2007. These acts of memory are crucial in forming not only Chinese opinions on Japan, but also Chinese national identity more broadly:

“The Chinese Ministry of National Defence states that the memorial is important for ‘internal patriotic education’ and ‘external promotion of peaceful relations.’ The massacre is continually commemorated in Chinese state politics today… According to the curator of the Nanjing Memorial, the commemorative day ‘reconfirms the fact of the Nanjing Massacre in a legal form’ and that the ‘holding of national commemorative ceremonies for the victims is a means to refute shameless claims of some Japanese’ and ‘maintain the historical truth and promotion of peace for all.’ 

Numerous conservative Japanese politicians and civil society groups have spoken out against the memorial’s contents, arguing that the demon-like depiction of Japanese troops has negatively impacted Japan’s national image abroad and damaged the national identity formation of Japanese children.

Further, the central narrative of the heroic leadership of the CCP and the brave resistance of the Chinese people remains the dominant narrative within the site.”

These views are only reinforced by current affairs – antagonism about uninhabited islands, Japan’s continued allyship with the US over the perceived threat of China – and Japan is consistently portrayed as the bully and aggressor, a feeling stoked by Chinese government propaganda. These issues, coupled with nationalistic sentiment in China, form the perfect storm. In a bid to protect their identity and their pride, irrational actors are incentivised to lash out at what they perceive to be China’s enemies, partly in a bid by the party to increase their own legitimacy:

The party ‘misappropriated China’s history’ in relation to Japan to boost its legitimacy and created a ‘staged play’ in which ‘youngsters have to act as patriots to gain certain benefits from the government’. These interviewees did not deny the existence of anti-Japanese feelings at the roots but attributed significance to the government’s instrumentalisation of history. As one scholar expounded, ‘popular nationalism is both natural and instrumental’, based on history and instigated by patriotic education. Similarly, another interviewee stressed that ‘history is both a reason and an excuse’ for the problems between China and Japan.

However, these sentiments can often grow to an extent beyond the government’s control, leading to a crisis situation that can turn inwards against the state as well as outwards towards perceived enemies:

The Chinese government carefully designs its discourse on nationalism to ensure criticism of Japan is not turned against the party-state, but at the same time it is challenged by new forms of nationalism. Some of the anti-Japan voices are emerging online or in street protests and have proven at times to be more hawkish than the party, while others have clearly identified a dichotomy between loyalty to the nation and to the state, despite the government’s attempt to unify the two.

In fact, if the Chinese government cannot control anti-Japanese sentiment effectively, then outbursts like the tragic death of a child may become more frequent. This may mean dropping the propaganda angle altogether and promoting peace and unity over disruption; it may have the added effect of promoting cooperation with China over allyship with the US. But this would require a long-term view on the part of the party-state, one that stretches both backwards and forwards in time.

A tense moment

Often the average man on the street is a better litmus test than the musings of academics or the speeches of politicians. Japan is still a popular holiday destination for Chinese tourists, and Japanese products are still valued as high-quality despite frequent state-sanctioned boycotts. In Japan, Chinese trends in beauty and celebrity have the power to bridge divides, even in contentious online spaces.

Surveys show that the potential for closer relations between the two nations may lie in youth attitudes. An opinion poll conducted by the Cabinet Office of Japan in 2021 showed that just 10%  of respondents in their 60s and 70s felt "close, friendly or familiar" with China, compared with over 40% of respondents aged 18 to 29. The road is still rocky, with some young Japanese worried about increasing tensions and the possibility of war, and young Chinese hurling insults over the internet. But others are hopeful that relations can be repaired, and are adamant they want to experience China for themselves rather than just taking in propaganda of the past:

When he was 17, Takumi Inoue, now a 22-year-old undergraduate at Waseda University in Tokyo, decided that he wanted to go to China.

In 2022, when China was still under a strict zero-Covid policy, Inoue flew to Beijing, where he endured a month-long quarantine before joining Peking University's double-degree programme.

"I think it's easy to attack China's authoritarian system, and right-wing politicians in Japan have often criticised the zero-Covid policy, but I believe that unless I really experience it, I cannot just criticise it."

Spending time in China did give him a new perspective on the country, he said.

"I used to believe that Chinese people hate us, and in fact, while I was called riben guizi [Japanese devil] twice in China, many people were very friendly after knowing I was Japanese."

Do you think relations between Japan and China can improve? Leave a comment below and start a conversation!