Mary Kay Magistad

Mary Kay Magistad

Mary Kay Magistad has been The World's Beijing-based East Asia correspondent since 2002, focusing especially on a rapidly changing China and the impact of China's rise on the region and the world.

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Tensions Rise Between China and Japan

September 17, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in Beijing. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in Beijing. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Tensions are rising between Japan and China over who owns a group of islands in the East China Sea.

In Beijing, anti-Japanese protesters have looted and burned Japanese-made cars and products, putting trade relations in jeopardy.

The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing and tells host Lisa Mullins that these protests may be an attempt to distract attention from China’s troubles.

Read the Transcript
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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. The US and China filed trade complaints against each other today. Both nations are claiming to be the victim of unfair trade practices. Now, that would have been enough to overshadow US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Beijing today, but Panetta’s visit was already overshadowed by something else: a wave of anti-Japanese protests that’s sweeping China right now. Some protests have turned violent, and several Japanese companies have had their facilities in China attacked. The tensions follow a territorial dispute that’s between the two countries over a group of islands in the east China Sea. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing. She’s been keeping an eye on the protests.

Magistad: In Beijing, the protests were a little more controlled than they were in other cities. I was standing outside the Japanese embassy for a couple of hours and watching the same group of about 500 protesters go by, singing the national anthem, carrying a picture of Mao Zedong. There were jitneys that would drive by every so often, with dozens of bottles of drinking water, and hand them out to protesters, who would then promptly throw them at the Japanese embassy. At other Japanese facilities — shops, some factories, restaurants — there was some damage done, windows broken, et cetera. And as a result, Panasonic has suspended operations at two of its factories in China. It’s closed another. Canon has suspended production in China at three of its four plants. Ito Yokado, which is a well-known Japanese department store, has closed 13 of its supermarkets and almost 200 7-11 stores. The Chinese state-run media have been sort of taunting Japan and saying, we have $240 billion in two-way trade, and if you want to risk all that and have another lost decade of economic depression, you go ahead and keep acting the way you’re acting.

Mullins: Is there reason to believe that much of what’s going on here has been hyped by the Chinese leadership as a way, as some have said, to distract attention from some of the government’s many troubles at home?

Magistad: What’s interesting about this all coming to a head at this moment is that we’re in the middle of a leadership transition in China. It has not gone entirely smoothly. There are a lot of negotiations behind the scenes. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and basically a tug of war between different factions within the Chinese Communist party. China analysts had long thought that if there reached a point of crisis where the economy was slowing down, where there was factionalism that was getting in the way of a smooth transition, that there might be some effort to divert the public’s attention to a cause that would rally nationalistic support. It may be pure coincidence that this is happening now, just weeks before the leadership transition. But even many Chinese on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, called Weibo, don’t think so. They think the two are connected.

Mullins: Bring Leon Panetta, the US defense secretary, into the picture here. This is his first trip to China as defense secretary. He happens to be there on other missions. At the same time, China is asking him to remain neutral in this territorial dispute between China and Japan. As things heat up, where does the US stand on this? A couple of interesting things about Leon Panetta’s visit. He stopped in Japan today on the way into China, and while in Japan, announced with the Japanese government that the US and Japan will have a second advanced missile-defense radar system on Japanese territory. The Chinese really were not happy about this. They said this will only encourage Japan to continue acting aggressively, as it has on these disputed islands, and that this is the US taking sides. Of course, when it comes down to it, the US and Japan have a mutual defense treaty. And the Japanese have pointed out that that treaty would extend into the islands if Japan were to come into military conflict with China.

Mullins: Thank you. From Beijing, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad.

Magistad: Thanks, Lisa.

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Discussion

One comment for “Tensions Rise Between China and Japan”

  • Emma Lynch

    Ever since I was little my grandmother has been telling me how much our ancestors have hated the Chinese. She told me a story once when I was a young girl that I have remembered vividly ever since. It was a story that she had heard when she was a little girl.

    “Before I was born Japan and China were in a dispute. China wanted Japan to forgive them so in return they gave them cigarettes. The Japanese did not trust the Chinese and they tested the cigarettes which they found had poison in them. In return we cut off their heads.”
    This was a very vague story that she told me when I was about five and I was not exactly sure what her reasoning was behind her telling me it but from then on I looked at China differently. Because I was a little naive girl I thought that if I had to be Japanese and embrace my culture I would have to dislike the Chinese. My grandmother also said that her school taught them how to tell the difference between a Japanese person, a Chinese person, and a Korean person. She also taught me how to tell the difference between the races. My grandmother told me that this was important in her time because they were scared of the different races coming into their country to spy on them. In many cultures traditions are passed down through the generations. Some regarding recipes, some stories, and others practices. This is a tradition that my grandmother and some of her generation thought was important to pass down. She was brought up like this and went through her whole life having resentment towards the Chinese although in retrospect she never knew someone with Chinese heritage personally. Some traditions should not be passed down and this is one of them. Many of my friends are from China and most of them do not understand why Japan and China are in conflict. Just from looking at my grandmother and Japan, Japan thinks that they are the superior of the Asian race.

    “To most Chinese, the Japanese are “devils,” and the hatred reaches far into the past — from China’s humiliating loss in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 to World War II-era atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. Anti-Japanese anger has both ethical and visceral dimensions, sustaining it unlike other more fleeting forms of nationalism.”
    -New York Times History seems to be repeating itself, the same inability to agree still exists. The story of the dispute over territory sounds all too familiar. The distrust of China and Japan, the fight between power, and an untold story of the focus of these islands to take the attention away from the elections in China. China and Japan are not able to learn from what has happened in the past. Neither side is going to let go of the struggle, but progress can not be made if they can not look toward the future instead of the past. Both are powerful countries and if they gave each other some support their economies would grow. Although China and Japan have a history of fighting they can make new history by mending their relations.