Chinese Anti-Japanese Demonstrations Starting to Focus on Real Problems

A friend writes about my recent post concerning anti-Japanese demonstrations in China:

The fact is that it's not happening in Beijing or Shanghai but mostly in central China.  Why?  Because more than 25% of college graduates in China can't find work.

China is experiencing a hell of a lot more economic pain than they're letting the world believe.  Rather than admit it to their citizens and take the blame for the anxious climate, they use their propaganda machine to focus every one's negative energy on Japan.  Better Japan than themselves, right?

Your take on why Japan is so impotent fills in the rest of the picture.


I agree with this whole-heartedly. The Chinese government allows these sorts of demonstrations as they deflect public opinion off the domestic problems (what government in the world doesn't do this?) and onto some foreign target.

But, now, it looks like the Chinese government might have allowed this Pandora's Box to open up a few unexpected surprises for them. Now the demonstrations seem to be evolving into protests against inflation and local government corruption. This, as my friend writes, is the true crux of the problem in China.


As Japan Times reports:


Hundreds of Chinese staged protests against Japan on Sunday in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, stirring more discontent after demonstrations in Sichuan Province the previous day. The situation took a strange twist, however, as protesters in Baoji, Shaanxi Province, appeared to vent their frustration with China's widening income gaps and corruption, carrying green banners that read, "We oppose corruption in the bureaucracy" and "Curb high housing prices."


This is not a "strange twist" that these protesters would vent their frustrations with the problems that actually do affect their personal lives... I wouldn't doubt for a moment that the Chinese government does the same thing the US government (or most governments do, for that matter) and use agent provocateurs to drive these protests into the directions that benefit the government in the media and public eye.

The Chinese government certainly does not want these demonstrations to deal with China's real problems.

But, in China, as in France, many of the people who aren't asleep do recognize what the real problems are that they are facing in their daily lives... Could it be that the Bread and Circuses routine is coming to an end in China too?