Increase vigilance: the reasonable conclusion of PLA pundits like Dai Xu?

[I spent hours on this post, then WordPress kindly lost it without a trace, hence this is a bit out-of-date, sorry]

The April 20 edition of the Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times) carried an article by recently-retired PLA Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang, directly criticizing the Chinese media’s hawkish military commentators. 

The article is brief — indeed so brief that the obligatory preface declaring support for the pundits’ patriotic mission does not even run to a full sentence:

In recent years, military affairs experts have frequently appeared on TV and in all kinds of publications, with the positive effect of strengthening the masses’ national defense awareness and arousing patriotism, but it cannot be denied that some have said off-key things, things that have misled the audience and been irresponsible.

Lt-Gen Wang, who now serves as Vice President of the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, made it quite clear that by “military affairs experts” he was referring to fellow PLA academics, particularly Zhang Zhaozhong, Luo Yuan, and of course Dai Xu.

It’s unusual to hear a PLA academic criticize his comrades in public; even more so for someone of such high rank. But most remarkable was Lt-Gen Wang’s claim that PLA academics’ war talk is “interfering” with the CCP-PLA leadership’s decision-making, citing the specific example of Sino-Japanese relations:

Some experts have inappropriately made comparisons of China and Japan’s military strength, claiming “China and Japan will inevitably go to war”, and that this “would not significantly affect our period of strategic opportunity”, [thus] inciting public sentiment and causing some interference with our high-level policy decision-making and deployments.

Wang Hongguang is in a position to know. Until recently he was Deputy Commander of the PLA’s Nanjing Military Region.

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Constraint on decision-makers?

Taken at face value, the article appears to be suggesting the pundits’ belligerent media statements are a nuisance to the top leadership group as a whole, a fly in some proverbial ointment they were planning to heal Sino-Japanese relations with. Wang is not specific about which policy decisions he sees as having been “interfered” with. But the implication is that by raising public attention, expectations and anti-foreign animosity, the pundits are creating ‘audience costs’ that constrain the leadership from mending relations with Japan as they otherwise would like to.

There are reasons to doubt this interpretation. First, an established line of research, notably the work of James Reilly, building on a preliminary thesis laid down by Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, suggests that a relatively united leadership would be more than capable of restraining the commentaries of PLA-affiliated pundits reliant on state media for their exposure, should their comments become seriously unhelpful. Second, as i recently argued, Beijing actually did introduce a series of conciliatory gestures and statements towards Japan this year, despite such public comments from military academics as:

- China should present a clear “military presence” in the Diaoyu Islands (Maj-Gen Luo Yuan, China Military Online, January 11) 

- For Japan to fire a warning shot at a PRC plane near Diaoyu would be “an act of war” (Maj-Gen Peng Guangqian, People’s Daily Online, January 14)

- “The battle to take over the Diaoyu Islands would not be a conventional operation … it is very possible the war would end in a couple of days or even in a few hours” (Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, on Beijing TV, early February)

- “Peace is not a free product that China can limitlessly provide … China has the absolutely justified right to choose war.” (Senior Colonel Dai Xu, February 18, Huanqiu Shibao)

All of these remarks appeared in prominent official media and were widely republished online (and this is certainly not an exhaustive list) during the same time period the PRC leadership, including Xi Jinping himself, received a succession of Japanese politicians as guests in Beijing, accompanied by positive coverage of Japan in PRC state media. Meanwhile, the number of entries by PRC ships into the 12nm territorial waters around the Diaoyu Islands noticeably decreased.

Graph showing decrease in Diaoyu 12nm zone entries in Jan-Feb 2013. (The source is Yomiuri, and the number for December is actually 11 by my count.)

Additionally, party and military officials made a number of reassuring public statements, such as Deputy Chief of the PLA General Staff Headquarters Qi Jianguo’s vow that “China will never cause a maritime conflict by choice,” and state-run media published commentaries explicitly dismissing the idea of a Diaoyu War.

This coexistence of warlike military expert statements and conciliatory policy initiatives indicates that the high-level decision-makers did not perceive the PLA experts’ commentaries, or any associated ‘audience costs’, to be a constraint on those initiatives — at that point in time. It is possible that Lt-Gen Wang’s article itself reflects a high-level decision to restrain or moderate “hawkish” voices; if so, things have changed since January-February, when such measures were evidently not considered necessary. But could the article be a sign of leadership disagreement over Japan policy, rather than consensus?

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Elite division? 

The deleterious effects on decision-making that Lt-Gen Wang’s article referred to may emerge in conjunction with periods of elite disagreement — a scenario that also accords with the Reilly/Fewsmith & Rosen theory, which holds that elite divisions “open the door” to less conventional influences on policy like public displays of nationalistic sentiment.

I was recently talking to a student here in Perth who said his father was an officer in the Nanjing Military Region that Wang recently retired from, and mentioned that it was a significant PLA power base of Wen Jiabao, the CCP’s best-known (alleged) “liberal”, who was pictured at Tiananmen Square behind Zhao Ziyang. So perhaps the “interference with our high-level decision-making” that Wang refers to could be code for “putting conciliatory/rational voices among the leadership at a disadvantage”.

The reference to interference with “deployments 部署” is even more mysterious and fascinating, as it may invoke an element of party-military relations. Again, precisely which deployments Wang is referring to is not clear: could it be a reference to the PLA-underwritten CMS plane flight over Diaoyu in December? Or the policy of ongoing regular entries into the 12nm territorial waters by ships from civilian agencies with close working relationships with the PLA? Or could Wang actually be linking hawkish punditry to the radar-lock incidents in January?

The latter incidents, two of the most serious encounters yet seen in the Diaoyu dispute, sharply punctuated an otherwise clear warming trend in Sino-Japanese relations. Both involved PLA warships locking weapons-control radars onto Japanese military assets around 100km from the disputed islands — a helicopter on January 19, and then a destroyer on January 30. Anonymous PLA sources have since told Kyodo that both incidents were the operational initiative of the relevant Chinese navy captain.

Following that report, the Japanese Defense Ministry indicated it was keeping an open mind to the possibility that the disclosure may have been “mind games”. And a recent John Garnaut report suggests just such a possibility:

Western military officials and diplomats have told me that they have evidence, including from electronic intercepts, that shows that the movements of Chinese boats and ships were micromanaged by the new taskforce chaired by Xi.

A princeling friend of the Xi family told Garnaut that that Xi Jinping has been applying lessons he learned from watching Deng Xiaoping take control of the PLA by attacking Vietnam in 1979. If Xi did sanction the radar incidents, this does not necessarily preclude them from being the “deployments” Lt-Gen Wang referred to as having been affected by the PLA pundits’ bluster, though it suggests a different mechanism once again.

It’s hard to dismiss the possibility that significant constituencies within the PLA would strongly favour confrontation over cooperation with Japan, not only in order to test out their newly-acquired advanced hardware but perhaps even more due to the nature of the CCP’s ideological control.

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Logical extensions of CCP-PLA ideology

Outside observers frequently mistake academics at PLA-run institutions for actual serving military officers. Much like the PLA’s song and dance troupe, they aren’t, and, unlike Wang Hongguang, most of them never have been. Major-General Luo Yuan says he fought in Laos in the early 1970s, but he came back to Beijing to begin his academic career in 1978, just before China went to war with Vietnam. The online biographies of PLA Navy “Rear Admirals” Zhang Zhaozhong and Yin Zhuo indicate they are career academics. And the closest PLA Air Force “Senior Colonel” Dai Xu seems to have come to flying a fighter jet is looking after the navigation platform at a training college.

It’s clear they wield little operational influence of their own, in spite of their impressive-sounding ranks (and even princeling status in the case of Luo Yuan). But a major question concerns the extent to which their sabre-rattling represents constituencies within the party-military establishment that might actually favour aggressive policies.

I’ve previously come across evidence that the China Energy Fund Committee, one of the institutions Dai Xu has affiliated his warmongering with, is the creation of a multi-billion-dollar PLA business empire controlled by very powerful red aristocrats. Miles Yu went further last week, writing in his Washington Times column on Dai Xu that:

Col. Dai is a core member of China’s strategic community and his views are backed by a huge following in Chinese military circles.

Although i was initially unconvinced by Miles’ argument, and remain deeply skeptical of Dai and his brethren’s status as strategists, their polemics could well give voice to common sentiments among PLA soldiers and officers, who are subject to particularly intense political indoctrination. For while “patriotic education” and “national defense education” is famously supposed to be dished out to all school and university students, that project pales in comparison with the importance to the CCP of maintaining ideological control of the PLA.

The presence of external threats to “maintain vigilance” against is undoubtedly a key part of the CCP’s ideological justification of its rule, an approach that is often surmised as a “shift to nationalism”. Such ideas of course permeate the extensive PLA propaganda system. A recent example from the PLA Daily, the Chinese military’s official newspaper, was an article titled ‘US internet strategy: fake cooperation, real confrontation‘, which cast the internet as a site of intense military struggle against foreign aggression.

PLA General Staff Headquarters Deputy Chief Qi Jianguo’s important January article in Study Times, which we might assume that the PLA have been made to study closely, identified “Five Problem Areas”, among them Japan’s “obvious” turn towards right-wing politics. ”Western countries“, meanwhile, are deploying techniques of “soft penetration” in order to “occupy minds” in countries like China. The implication is that anyone in China — particularly if you happen to be a soldier — is liable to become a part of the foreign plot to thwart China’s rise, simply by wavering in their loyalty to the CCP.

Even the wildest Dai Xu conspiracy theories, like bird flu as a US biopsychological attack, or PRC internet companies working the for American government, can be seen as logical extensions of this official view of China’s international situation. If the outside world has such downright evil plans for China, why dice with death by not attacking them, sooner rather than later? [†]

But having legions of fans and powerful patrons is different to actually influencing policy decision-making. It’s plausible, likely even, that the genuinely powerful backers of Dai Xu and his ilk could admire their militant spirit, or see it as useful, without ever considering their suggestions as serious policy options to be advocated. Meanwhile, online discourse suggests the wider readership (whether or not this includes many PLA soldiers) may obtain a sense of empowerment from their apparently alarming diatribes.

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Reassuring alarmism

Lt-Gen Wang argument appears to be that the PLA media pundits’ impact on policymaking is mediated by the “popular sentiment 民意” that their war talk incites. Just as specific examples of policies and deployments were absent from the article, i would dearly love to know which manifestations of popular sentiment he has in mind. Presumably it’s not the anti-Japanese street protests in August and September last year, since they were clearly not whipped up by a few loud-mouthed military academics. I feel like i’ve engaged in enough speculation for one post, but if you have any ideas on this or Lt-Gen Wang’s other comments, please do help me out in the comments section, or via gmail (achubb@).

On the internet, deciding what “popular sentiment” relates to military “experts” depends largely on where one looks. Both Luo Yuan and Dai Xu have recently been subject to intense ridicule among the relatively sophisticated Weibo crowd and on the liberal-leaning NetEase news portal. This contrasts starkly with the overwhelming agreement their hardline stances have traditionally received on mainstream news portal comment threads and, of course, their blogs, which are lightning rods for angry online nationalists.

Comments on Lt-Gen Wang’s article on the Huanqiu website offered a compelling glimpse into the variation in public interpretations of the PLA pundit phenomenon, with responses ranging from relieved agreement at seeing the issue raised (“this person understands what’s going on”), to Buddhist appeals against harming others, and the links between China’s “fascist” media-pundits and a “generation of poisonous youth”.

The majority, however, denounced Lt-Gen Wang for attacking their favourite TV soldiers. Their words suggested the appeal of the “military experts” is borne much less of an actual desire for war than some sense of reassurance in the face of the terrifying world that CCP(-PLA) propaganda constructs:

mrx8603 [Chongqing]: Strongly demand the race traitor Vice President ‘Wang Hongguang’ step down! This high-maintenance, useless-in-war [person's] fallacious remarks are obviously at odds with CMC Chairman Xi’s demand for the PLA to ‘prepare for combat’! If the PLA don’t prepare for war and talk about war, how can the production and living environment of the Chinese people be guaranteed?

冲锋队 [Tianjin]: The entire article by Wang Hongguang is full of defeatism, extremely harmful to the youth! Extremely harmful to national defense construction!

yeming1 [Jinhua, Zhejiang]: This person’s purpose is to shut down military experts like Li Li and Zhang Zhaozhong who the people like, and even force them off CCTV so that we cannot hear the military’s voice of righteousness and bravery. If these people’s plans are allowed to succeed, China will be all flowers and songs, and once the enemies have sharpened their knives, it will be a fattened pig.

The evident anxiety of these commentators may illuminate an important element of the PLA pundits’ market appeal: stoking of fears over China’s vulnerability to vicious and all-powerful external enemies, and at the same time casting the alarmed readership themselves as the solution.

Because the only answer to America’s overwhelming evil power, as Dai Xu argued in a widely-republished piece last year, is militaristic vigilance. As long as you maintain your fear and suspicion of the outside world, Dai tells his audience, China will be alright. Indeed, patriotism is “the only thing they cannot defeat.”

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[†] CCP-PLA doctrine does in fact contain a fairly unequivocal answer to this question. For even as official propaganda points to the conclusion that hardline measures like military action are called for in the East and South China Sea, the important concept of ”protecting the period of strategic opportunity” points the other way. This concept was prominently deployed in PLA General Logistics Department Political Commissar Liu Yuan’s public denunciations of the idea of a Diaoyu War earlier this year.

Indeed, it has scarcely been noticed by foreign commentators, but external threats were not really the main theme of Qi Jianguo’s article either. The “Five Problem Areas” that have received so much attention outside China, appeared tucked away in the middle of a very long paragraph near the end — a paragraph that began by explaining the “Four No-Changes”, each presented as a good sign future peace. The article also repeatedly emphasized the notion that common interests with the US were increasing over time, and that “peace and development remains the theme of the age”.

The argument, however, is a cold rational calculation, whereas the content of much CCP-PLA propaganda is strongly emotive. Hence, i would hypothesize, the “period of strategic opportunity” argument would have much less purchase as it moves further down the chain, away from the decision-makers or commanders for whom the stakes are highest, and whose impetus for prioritizing rational calculation is therefore strongest.

Increase vigilance

Liu Yuan giving his March 14 interview

…not to be confused with Luo Yuan

Over the past few weeks i’ve counted five instances of PLA General Liu Yuan publicly warning against military conflict with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands. If this puzzled the SCMP’s seasoned reporters, who described Liu as “hawkish” in a story quoting him saying, “The friendship between people in China and Japan is everlasting,” it was positively shocking for many the Chinese internet’s e-nationalists. [1]

Actual serving General Liu Yuan is not to be confused with retired academic “Major-General” Luo Yuan (i’ll continue to put his rank in quotes to distinguish them), who was dumped from the CPPCC this month for being “too outspoken”.

That rationale was a bit ironic given he too has been oddly conciliatory on the Diaoyu issue of late. Not only did “Major-General” Luo categorically refute a Japanese media report that he had called for Tokyo to be bombed, he also seemed to deny he had ever suggested establishing a military presence on Diaoyu. And in one of his earliest Weibos, Luo raised a historical episode that seemed to imply that the US could secretly be trying to fool China into giving it a rationale for military intervention over Diaoyu:

In 1990, as Iraq massed military forces on the Kuwait border, the US ambassador told Saddam, “We do not take a position.” On July 31, US Assistant Secretary of State affirmed that “there is no duty compelling us to use our military”. As a result Iraq invaded Kuwait, under the belief that the US would not intervene, whereupon the US gained a great number of rationales for sending troops. From this we can see, the US wields not only high technology, but also strategic deception.

1990年，伊拉克在科威特边境集结军队时，美大使向萨达姆表示，“不持立场”，7月31日美助理国务卿在众院听证会上肯定“没有义务促使我们使用我们的军队”，结果，伊拉克在确信美不会介入的情况下，入侵科威特，于是，美获得了大量出兵的理由。由此可见，海湾战争，美国不仅玩的是高技术，还玩战略误导

As “Major-General” Luo posted the above, he was being subjected to a now-famous Weibo struggle session over his bombastic maiden post’s exhortation to “punish traitors at home” and his hilariously incompetent attempt at doing his own 50-cent party work. But between the cyber-guffaws of ridicule, plenty of Weibo commenters made the same connection as me, and challenged Luo to clarify just what he was saying in relation to China and Japan.

Luo’s allegory sounds like a reference to a key argument from Liu‘s 18th CCP Congress study notes: “The United States and Japan are afraid of us catching up, and will use all means to check China’s development, but we absolutely must not take their bait.”

Liu meanwhile, in a reversal of the usual division of labour between the PLA’s real generals and media pundit corps, has made repeated explicit comments on Sino-Japanese relations and the Diaoyu issue during the period of the Two Meetings:

• March 6: on the sidelines of the NPC, General Liu says that peaceful resolution of Sino-Japanese issues is the wise choice, repeats lines from his study notes extract excerpted in the Huanqiu Shibao on February 4 about protecting the “period of strategic opportunity” and war being a last resort, and adding a flourish: “The friendship between people in China and Japan is everlasting.”
• March 10: General Liu tells a news conference, “[War] is just not on, in future we should just defer, discuss and coordinate, it’s not worth resorting to humanity’s most extreme and violent methods to resolve it.” He even admonishes one young reporter directly: “A kid like you would not know what war is, it’s actually very cruel, and the costs are great.”
• March 13: Liu tells china.org.cn, a news portal co-operated by the State Council Information Office, that even talking of “bottom lines” is “not necessarily appropriate” and that the Sino-Japanese tensions area “to a large extent about face 面子”. He also cites the legacy of Deng Xiaoping to argue “we must be clear regarding the overall situation, and what is in the interests of the Chinese and Japanese people”. Xinhua promulgates the article. (These comments may also have been taken from the March 10 press conference, but if so that only adds more weight to the idea that propaganda authorities wanted Liu’s comments to have sustained coverage in official media.)
• March 14: Liu Yuan gives an exclusive interview to Xinhuanet, in which he repeats and redoubles his previous comment that that Diaoyu is an issue of face and that “many young people do not know what a war is like, it is actually very cruel and costly.” This was carried on China’s official military web portal.

In the Xinhuanet correspondent’s polite terms, General Liu’s repeated comment about Diaoyu being an issue of face ”generated discussion”. According to the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Office’s samples, Liu was the fourth-most talked-about topic of the day on March 13. On Weibo, he even rivalled a national mapping agency official’s announcement of plans to send a survey team to the islands — for Red Guards 2.0, a news story as heartening as General Liu’s anti-warmongering rhetoric was horrifying.

Graph of Sina Weibo degree of attention (whatever exactly that means): “survey of Diaoyu” vs “Liu Yuan interview” (from People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Office)

There is no doubt the General got the attention of the internet portal commenter constituency too. On Phoenix, Liu’s comments produced the biggest and fourth-biggest most-comment threads of the week, as of 19 March PM Beijing time. It was predictable that this group of “opinion-makers” would disagree with Liu’s comments, although perhaps not in such eerily Nazi-like language:

General Liu, the Diaoyu Islands are an issue of sovereignty and living space 生存空间, absolutely not an issue of face. [16,799]

Diaoyu is absolutely not a contest for face, it is a battle of life and death between races 民族. [13,721]

The Sino-Japanese dispute over Diaoyu is about sovereignty, it is not an issue of face. [7770]

The Diaoyu Islands are China’s territory, what the Chinese people want is justice! [6723]

How can this be an issue of face? This is the core interest of the Chinese nation 中华民族! [6766]

Recovering lost territory, how can this just be an issue of face? [6090]

And so on and so on it goes, in exactly the same vein. There is not a single word of support for Liu to be found in either the top comments or the most recent comments, which also included this gem:

Dai Xu and ["Major-General"] Luo Yuan, you are the people’s generals, the people will remember you. [5]

Being compared unfavourably to an ageing buffoon and a nasty armchair warmonger was bad, but it was not the harshest criticism of General Liu on Phoenix. Notably, the following has received many more expressions of agreement than all the other recent comments around it:

Can Diaoyu be a face issue? General Liu, i don’t dare to dignify your analogy, it’s hard to believe these kinds of words would come out the mouth of a general, this class of person harms the country and harms the people 吴国吴民! [22]

Is it surprising to see this kind of criticism of a serving PLA general allowed during the Two Meetings? I’m not sure — please leave answers in the comments. But the latter comment was probably just one droplet from a torrent of much harsher criticism that was held back by the Phoenix censorship barrier. Both Phoenix’s threads were tightly controlled, with 173,000+ and 145,000+ participants purportedly producing only 1169 and 493 comments respectively (KIR 148:1 and 295:1), indicating only a very low percentage on comments were being allowed to go on display.

Interestingly, among those comments that did satisfy the censors’ criteria, i could find exactly zero expressions of support for Liu Yuan. Was criticism, and only criticism, being allowed? This is not the first time i’ve observed this phenomenon of exclusively criticism being displayed in response to officials’ comments on foreign policy; it happened in relation to Hu Jintao‘s call for calm on the South China Sea issue during at APEC last year.

Over at NetEase, which has a much looser censorship policy and a less nationalistic readership/commentariat, the pattern was similar. On a much more credible comment thread (KIR 15:1), the top comments all either stated disagreement or mocked Liu Yuan, and the thread contained much harsher terms than those permitted by Phoenix (“scum of the military”; “what are you afraid of — no Moutai?”)

I only managed to find one comment there supporting General Liu, and it was well down the page, which may suggest the that the Phoenix censors were not in fact disallowing support for General Liu — rather more likely, comments were all hidden (ie. censored) by default, and there simply were too few supportive ones for the censors to conveniently bring forth even a few for display. Perhaps General Liu in the portals is in the same boat as “Major-General” Luo on Weibo: if he wants a positive response, he’ll have to go and post it himself.

On the other hand, it remains possible that Phoenix, which did much for Bo Xilai while he was on the rise, may have an underhanded agenda in these debates, which may in turn have some deeper significance. On today’s top story, a hawkish retort from “Senior Colonel” Dai Xu, who has emerged as the most extreme pundit in the PLA’s arsenal, and the current darling of online nationalists, the #1 comment reads:

Firmly support Dai Xu, oppose 反对 Liu Yuan. [2549]

Perhaps this is overanalyzing, but it occurs to me that when it starts being okay to publicly “oppose” the Political Commissar of the PLA General Logistics Department, we may be touching on a serious political schism. Yes, this is just a comment in a forum, but being the #1 story it’s a very carefully managed forum, and it’s stuck at the very top, immediately visible to all. Dai Xu must have some kind of senior backing, because his statements have only been getting more and more extreme as his prominence continues to grow. Who does Dai speak for? Or is it all just part of the show, a 双簧戏? Once again, please let me know what you think in the comments.

The “besieging” of Luo’s Weibo last month has been labelled a “public opinion incident” 舆情事件. How would the new government be viewing the public online denunciation of a much more senior PLA figure tied in various ways to Xi Jinping? At the very least, we know the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Office will be watching.

So what to make of General Liu’s statements? His numerous re-statements of the same arguments certainly indicate he was trying to convey a message, but the intended audience was more likely the Party and military, rather than the public (though his haughty admonition of the young journalist mentioned above reminds us not to underestimate the leadership’s degree of aloofness). And the “face” comments were never going to be well received by the online-commenting public. It’s been suggested by one very knowledgeable that Liu was signalling that Xi Jinping’s Diaoyu consolidation exercise is complete.

Whatever the explanation, the General Liu Yuan episode is another example of how the PRC simply doesn’t feel answerable to online nationalist opinion on foreign policy matters. This is understandable, given that even as the portal censors held back the tide of indignation at the General, the public at large were clearly far, far more interested in the dead pigs of the Huangpu River:

Sina Weibo search graph: “Liu Yuan” vs “dead pigs”

[1] The same SCMP story also referenced some Chinese and foreign media as interpreting General Liu’s study notes on the 18th Congress published in the Huanqiu Shibao on February 5 as a ”call to prepare for possible warfare”, a reading that i’ve been unable to find any examples of.

Japanese & Vietnamese Prime Ministers Nguyen Tan Dung and Shinzo Abe on January 16 in Hanoi

This post was originally published on the China Policy Institute Blog:

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Between January 10 and 19 this year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida paid formal bilateral visits to the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia: seven countries in the space of 10 days. The diplomatic blitz illustrates the intersection of the East and South China Sea disputes, and the impetus this has given to Japan’s policy of deepening regional engagement since the early 2000s.

Six of Abe and Kishida’s seven destination countries were ASEAN member states, and three of them were parties to the South China Sea disputes. In fact, Taiwan aside, the only non-PRC South China Sea claimant state that Japan’s leaders did not visit was Malaysia, which continues to quietly extract hydrocarbons and develop tourism in the disputed area with little hindrance, thanks to its steadfast determination to avoid antagonizing Beijing.

Abe had actually wanted Washington to be his first destination after taking office, in line with his publicly stated intention to strengthen ties with the US, but Barack Obama was too busy to host a January summit. The hasty arrangement of Abe’s jaunt through Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia — he set out on January 16, only nine days after being told Obama’s schedule was full – seems to suggest receptiveness to Japan’s advances in major ASEAN capitals.

Not surprisingly, the Philippines and Vietnam were the most openly enthusiastic about the Japanese leaders’ visits. Kishida arrived in Manila on January 9, exactly one month after Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told the Western media the Philippines would “very much” welcome a rearmed Japan free from pacifist constitutional constraints. This time Del Rosario took the opportunity to denounce the PRC’s South China Sea policy in probably the strongest terms yet seen from a serving minister, telling reporters after the meeting that the China was engaging in “very threatening” behaviour: “We do have this threat and this threat is shared by many countries not just by Japan.”

If the rhetoric sounded highly-strung, it was almost matched by the two countries’ actual actions. Del Rosario said Kishida had brought with him an offer of 10 brand-new patrol boats for the Philippines Coast Guard, later confirmed to be supplied under Japan’s Official Development Aid program. To put that in context, the Philippines Coast Guard only has 15 ships currently in service, plus 5 on order from France, so Japan is single-handedly increasing the PCG’s ship numbers by more than 30%.

The patrol boat deal, which was flagged last year year by Japanese embassy staff in Manila, is reportedly in addition to a separate grant for two refurbished older ships. Importantly, these would be able to stay at sea for weeks at a time, a capability that could have helped during last year’s Scarborough Shoal incident, when China’s maritime surveillance and fisheries ships outlasted their Filipino counterparts to end up in control of the disputed atoll.

Six days after Kishida and del Rosario’s meeting, Abe met with Vietnam’s trinity of leaders in Hanoi — Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, and President Truong Tan Sang — and the two sides reaffirmed the “strategic partnership” in place since since 2009. The Vietnamese PM called the visit a milestone and thanked Japan for its ongoing development aid dispensations, according to Xinhua. In addition to promising up to $1.5b in loans, Abe said Vietnam and Japan must “play a more active role” in regional peace and security and deepen ties to meet “challenging developments” in the Asia-Pacific.

It has since been reported that the Japanese government will provide training for Vietnamese maritime law enforcement personnel from Japan’s experienced and technologically advanced coast guard, as part of a ¥2.5 billion budget allocation for security cooperation with Southeast Asian countries.

Abe had organized for Jakarta to be the location for his first major foreign policy speech, although it was never delivered due to the PM rushing home to deal with the Algerian hostage crisis. It was published nonetheless on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Entitled “The Bounty of the Open Seas”, it expounded on Abe’s determination to “expand the horizons of Japanese diplomacy”, support for the US strategic pivot, and intention to strengthen ties with “maritime Asia”. Ten days later, in a low-key exchange, the Commander of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force visited President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who affirmed that relations were “very good, robust and improving, especially in the sectors of defense and military”.

Abe succeeded in eliciting explicit public mentions of the South China Sea issue from the leaders of both Vietnam and Indonesia, a development likely to annoy Beijing, which sees no legitimate reason for Japan to be involved. Kishida also managed to discuss the dispute with Brunei’s foreign minister, reached agreement on a deepened ”strategic partnership” with Indonesia, and announced further major economic initiatives in the Philippines. Earlier in the month Japan had sent Finance Minister Taro Aso to Myanmar to announce the cancelling or restructuring of nearly $5 billion of Burma’s debt, and numerous economic development projects.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was reticent on all this, with spokesman Hong Lei offering only “we have noticed relevant reports” when asked [ZH] about Abe’s trip. But Japan’s activities was the subject of a range of media discussion in China. The People’s Daily’s foreign affairs commentator [ZH] struck a concerned tone regarding what it called a “values-diplomacy offensive” by Japan. This was nothing less than “an attempt to drag Southeast Asian countries into the encirclement of China,” the commentary noted, but “there is absolutely no market in Southeast Asia for this kind of fantasy”.

A more sanguine Global Times editorial declared: “If Abe’s trip to Southeast Asia is aimed at ‘containing China,’ he can only reduce Japan’s role on the political stage of Asia. The trip will only be a show without substantive content. Maybe Abe’s cabinet is not so stupid.” Writing in the same publication, PLA pundit Dai Xu as usual took the gloomiest view of developments, especially Japan’s cultivation of closer ties with Myanmar, which until 2011 had been a strong ally of the People’s Republic. Japan, Colonel Dai wrote, was engaging in “a vicious economic war which aims to drive out Chinese companies, control Myanmar’s economy, and finally, cut off China’s energy passageway to the Indian Ocean.”

But the effort to build closer economic ties with Southeast Asia was not a shift in strategy for Japan, which has been reducing its relative reliance on China for years; the PRC’s share of Japan’s overall trade shrank from 18.4% in 2000 to 11.2% in 2011. The economic punishment meted out to both Japanese and Philippine businesses during their respective standoffs over the Diaoyu Islands and Scarborough Shoal last year simply provides extra motivation for Japan and the South China Sea claimant states to attempt to diversify their economic links. The PRC’s economic diplomacy has certainly caught the attention of the Vietnamese government, whose top trading partner is China. In November, Deputy Foreign Minister Pham Quang Binh told Bloomberg, “Economic force should not be applied in the case of settlement of territorial disputes,” saying he had “observed” the Diaoyu Islands issue and its impact on Sino-Japanese trade relations.

While China’s political and economic leverage in Southeast Asia has become a subject of concern for some commentators on regional politics, the apparent success of Kishida and Abe’s diplomatic overtures was a timely reminder of Japan’s own importance to ASEAN countries. While China was ASEAN’s number one trading partner with 11.7% of the bloc’s total trade in 2011, Japan was just 0.3% behind with 11.4%, according to official statistics. Japan remains Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines’ top trading partner, Vietnam’s leading foreign investor, and a major source of cheap capital via its Official Development Aid program.

Japan also has the fifth-largest defense budget in the world, despite its “pacifist” constitution, and that strategic heft is looking increasingly valuable to China’s co-claimants in the South China Sea. Japan, for its part, is seeking to spread its strategic burden through direct assistance to China’s principal rivals there, Vietnam and the Philippines. This trend looks set to increase over the coming years as Japan re-enters the weapons export industry.

In his “Democratic Security Diamond” article published on December 27, the day after he took office, Abe explicitly warned of the South China Sea becoming “Lake Beijing”, and argued that Japan’s continued resistance to China’s pressure over the East China Sea’s disputed islands was crucial to preventing this possibility. The Japanese government’s recent actions suggest it also views Southeast Asian claimants’ continued resistance to Chinese pressure over the disputed South China Sea islands as crucial to Japan’s own security.

As seen on TV…well, not quite but almost

Apologies to anyone who may have visited in hope of new material in the past few weeks. This year I need to write a PhD dissertation so posts will be even more sporadic than usual. There are a number of unfinished ones in the pipeline that I really hope to get around to completing at some point, and I will try to also post some of the summary translations of significant PRC media articles and comment threads that I normally keep to myself.

What follows is a piece I wrote for the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief which came out last Friday: Radar Incident Obscures Beijing’s Conciliatory Turn. This version here has the addition of links to the sources at the end.

Also, since there are no comments on the Jamestown website, I encourage anyone who wants to discuss to leave comments here on this post.

Thank you for tuning in and making this blog such a temptation to write on.

—

Radar Incident Obscures Beijing’s Conciliatory Turn Towards Japan

China Brief, Vol 13, Issue 4

February 15, 2013

On February 5, Japanese Defense Minister Onodera Itsunori told the world that a Chinese Navy frigate had pointed “something like fire-control radar” at a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyer some 100-150 kilometers north of the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands on January 30. He said the same may have happened to a MSDF helicopter on January 19, though this remained unverified (Daily Yomiuri, February 7; Sydney Morning Herald, February 7).

This marked the first direct involvement of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships in the ongoing confrontations around the islands since Japan’s government purchased three of them from a private Japanese owner on September 10 last year. Accordingly, much reportage and analysis has characterized this as part of an ongoing series of escalatory Chinese actions in the East China Sea. Yet the radar incidents ran counter to a distinctly conciliatory trend since mid-January in China’s official rhetoric, diplomatic action, media discourse and even maritime activities.

Part of Xi’s Plan?

Chinese officials told the Lowy Institute’s Linda Jakobson that a Diaoyu response leadership task force formed in September under Xi Jinping’s leadership devised a step-by-step plan to force the Japanese government to acknowledge the existence of the sovereignty dispute. According to Dr. Jakobson, “the most recent escalation reflects the next step” in the implementation of such a plan (The Diplomat, February 8; Asahi Shimbun, February 4; Sydney Morning Herald, December 5, 2012).

There are compelling reference points to support the idea of a centrally-mandated Chinese strategy of steadily increasing pressure on the Japanese position in the waters and skies around the islands. The most salient are the regularization of previously-occasional maritime law enforcement patrols in contested waters since September; the first-ever recorded incursion by a PRC government plane into Japan-administered territorial airspace on December 13; and the scrambling of PLA fighter jets to confront Japanese F-15s on January 10 and 19 (Asahi Shimbun, February 6; South China Morning Post, January 11; Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MOFA], December 18, 2012).

Beijing’s official reaction to Japan’s allegation—more than two days of silence followed by flat denials by both the foreign and defense ministries—however, raises the possibility that the radar incidents were not a continuation of this pattern of deliberate escalation. Upon finding its voice on February 8, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) accused Japan of “completely creating something out of nothing,” while a Ministry of National Defense statement confirmed both encounters but said fire-control radars simply had not been used. These responses contrasted sharply with the ministries’ usual refrain when Chinese behavior in such areas has been questioned—namely, asserting that such activities are “routine” and “completely normal.”

The long silence would seem to imply that the incidents were a product of decisions made by actors outside the party center, possibly a mid-level PLA Navy commander was responsible. The MFA and MND’s effective disavowals of the PLA’s actions are not the only signs that the Chinese central leadership may have adjusted its approach to the Diaoyu crisis. Indeed, a range of conciliatory behavior over the past few weeks also suggests such a shift.

Sino-Japanese Diplomatic Thaw

From January 14, starting with Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying’s meeting with Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Senator Kenji Kosaka, a succession of visits by China-friendly Japanese politicians were accorded prominent coverage in the official and popular media, dressed in positive imagery and photo-ops with Chinese leaders. Beijing also invited former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio for a four-day visit, and his January 16 meeting with Jia Qinglin ran on both CCTV’s flagship 7pm national news bulletin and the front page of the People’s Daily (People’s Daily, January 17; CCTV, January 16; Daily Yomiuri, January 12). Hatoyama’s apology the following day for crimes committed by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War was hailed by CCTV as “unprecedented,” and images of his visit to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall were splashed across the front pages of major daily newspapers (Japan Times, January 19; CCTV, January 17).

Next, and most importantly, came Yamaguchi Natsuo, leader of the New Komeito party, a junior coalition partner in Abe Shinzo’s government, who arrived on January 22 carrying a handwritten letter from the Japanese prime minister. His arrival was reported immediately in state television news updates, and the Chinese MFA spokesman Hong Lei quickly welcomed the visit by saying: “This facilitates both sides to step up communications, settle disputes and promote healthy bilateral ties” (South China Morning Post, January 23).

Chinese media coverage presented Yamaguchi as a powerful, moderate element in a Japanese government previously depicted as beholden to “rightists” with militarist ambitions. CCTV’s evening current affairs magazine show ran a segment that emphasized the New Komeito party’s positive historic role in Sino-Japanese relations, and told viewers it was now “once again a ruling party” that would directly influence the LDP’s judgments. The show even presented Japanese newspaper analyses stating Abe’s decision to send Yamaguchi “expressed the Japanese government’s intention to improve bilateral ties” (CCTV, January 22). In a further illustration of Beijing’s intention to shape the public mood to become more amenable to warming ties, a People’s Daily commentary questioning the sincerity of Japan’s stated intention to mend relations appeared only in the paper’s overseas edition (South China Morning Post, January 24).

Aside from scheduled meetings with two Chinese government-affiliated friendship associations, Yamaguchi’s itinerary was not declared publicly, and it remained unclear whether party General Secretary Xi Jinping would agree to meet with him or receive Abe’s letter. At one point on January 24, major internet news portals displayed leading headlines proclaiming “Japanese envoy visits China for two days with no result, has not obtained audience with Xi Jinping.”

On January 25, the last day of the trip, Xi did receive Yamaguchi in the Great Hall of the People. According to the People’s Daily’s front-page, top-right, photo-illustrated lead report on the meeting, Xi Jinping said China “remains committed” to Sino-Japanese relations and urged both sides to “look at the big picture.” Invoking the legacies of Zhou Enlai and Tanaka Kakuei, who re-established Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations in 1972, Xi said: ”Like the older generation of leaders, we should show a sense of national and historical responsibility and political wisdom, overcome the difficulties in bilateral relations and push relations forward.” (People’s Daily, January 26).

Determined to De-escalate?

The high-profile, high-volume Chinese media coverage of the warming diplomatic ties indicates the leadership perceived little in the way of constraints on their freedom of action resulting from oppositional public or party opinion. Between Hatoyama’s arrival on January 16 and Yamaguchi’s meeting with Xi on January 25, a number of negative bilateral developments occurred, any of which may have prompted Xi to decline to meet with Abe’s emissary had the leadership been worried about a domestic backlash.

- On January 15, Defense Minister Onodera implied that Japanese fighter planes may fire warning shots at Chinese aircraft in airspace above the disputed islands (Asahi Shimbun, January 16). Popular Chinese media reported this as “explicit confirmation” that tracer bullets would be fired, spurring discussion of Japan’s hostility and the likelihood of war breaking out.
- On January 18, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at a joint press conference alongside Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, stated for the first time that the United States was “oppose[d]” to acts that “seek to undermine Japanese administration” of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands (U.S. State Department, January 18).
- On January 22, Abe declared Japan would continue to send military aircraft to Senkaku/Diaoyu airspace whenever it so wished, and reiterated the position that no dispute over the islands’ sovereignty existed, rejecting Yamaguchi’s well-publicized proposal of “shelving” the island dispute (South China Morning Post, January 24).
- On January 24, Japan Coast Guard (JCG) vessels used water cannons on a Taiwanese fishing boat carrying Diaoyu activists, which was under escort from the Republic of China Coast Guard, 17 nautical miles from the islands. Dramatic footage and photographs of the skirmish were aired on China’s commercial television and widely published online.

Yet the Xi-Yamaguchi meeting not only went ahead, the stream of visits by Japanese statesmen continued afterwards with the arrival of former Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi along with other current LDP politicians on January 29. More upbeat remarks from Chinese officials followed, including the Chinese Ambassador at Geneva Liu Zhenmin saying the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute could be “controlled”, and PLA Deputy Chief of Staff Qi Jianguo telling U.S. lawmakers “China will never cause a maritime conflict by choice” (Asahi Shimbun, February 4; AP, January 25).

There has been a concrete aspect to the Chinese de-escalation, which domestic “nationalist” constituencies also have failed to constrain. The January-February period has seen a surprising quantitative decline in the frequency of Chinese government boats entering the 12 nautical miles (nm) of territorial waters around the disputed islands. According to Japanese Coast Guard reports, Chinese boats made 11 entries into the 12nm zone in the 34 days between December 5 and January 7 (NHK, January 7; Daily Yomiuri, December 5, 2012). In the next 34 days from January 8 to February 11, Japanese authorities, however, found Chinese boats entering the territorial waters only three times (Kyodo News, February 11; Japanese MOFA, February 7; Jiji Press, January 30). Operational wear and tear on the Chinese side probably are not behind this drop-off. During this period, China Maritime Surveillance (CMS) ships conducted several patrols in the “contiguous zone” adjacent to the territorial waters from which they could have entered the 12nm zone with little extra effort or resources.

On two further occasions, China’s State Oceanic Administration and an embedded Xinhua correspondent publicly claimed that CMS vessels entered the territorial waters, but the JCG does not appear to have counted either of these instances (Xinhua, February 9; State Oceanic Administration, January 19). This could be a sign that fatigue is affecting the JCG’s ability to monitor the area, but, even if the Chinese claims are correct, the reduction in CMS 12nm zone entries remains clear (from 11 down to five). China’s ships recently have spent longer periods of time inside the zone, including 13 hours on January 7 and 14 hours on February 4. Staying longer inside the zone—long enough to be sure to attract a formal, diplomatic protest from Japan, which can then be high-handedly rejected—may be a less provocative, and, thus, more economical and risk-averse way for Beijing to maintain the impression of ongoing patrols among the public back home.

Managing Multiple Discourses

Over the past several weeks, Beijing also has shown its ability to separately manage and shape multiple domestic discourses among different constituencies on international and military affairs. While “combat readiness” has become a party and military watchword of the early Xi Jinping era, Chinese authorities have been actively putting a dampener on expectations for military action among the general public of late (South China Morning Post, January 21). In effect, the party appears to be trying to increase combat readiness among the military at the same time as decreasing it among the public. Numerous media commentaries have appeared in party-controlled popular media in recent weeks arguing explicitly that China must avoid getting involved in a war.

Through December and early January, the Global Times editorial pages carried numerous declarations of enthusiasm for a Diaoyu war, always in the name of “the Chinese people.” On January 16, the paper, however, unexpectedly opined “The Chinese media have seen a growing number of discussions about war recently…the whole society needs to make a thorough reflection. War is a terrible thing. No matter who is the enemy, any war will bring great shock to Chinese society, risking severe damage to national economy” (Global Times, January 16). Other commentaries arguing against or downplaying the prospect of a war for Diaoyu appeared on January 22, February 4 and February 8. All were widely republished on major Chinese internet news portals.

The most remarkable anti-war contribution has come from General Liu Yuan, son of Liu Shaoqi and Political Commissar of the PLA’s General Logistics Department. The Global Times on February 4 published an extract from General Liu’s study notes on the “spirit” of the recently completed 18th CCP Congress under the headline, “Protect the Period of Strategic Opportunity, War is a Last Resort.” With broad sweeps of Chinese doctrine (in particular the title), classical Chinese strategy and nationalistic rhetoric, the piece was a blistering attack on warmongering in general and the idea of a war to seize occupied islands in particular.

China’s economic development already has been shattered by war with Japan twice before, Liu Yuan observed, and it “absolutely must not be interrupted again by some accidental incident.” Like Gou Jian and Han Xin, legendary kings of yore, China must abandon its short-term pride and work for long-term glory. “The United States and Japan are afraid of us catching up, and will use all means to check China’s development, but we absolutely must not take their bait” (Global Times, February 4)> In the context of today’s Chinese defense and military discourse, there can be few more effective ways to discredit military adventurism than to cast it as a U.S. trap.

While sensational, hawkish analyses from academic pundits bearing PLA military rank are common in the China’s popular media, detailed commentaries from genuine operational PLA Generals are rare. Perhaps best known outside China for his outspoken anti-corruption crackdown, General Liu is believed to be a close ally of Xi Jinping with a personal relationship stretching back to days of princeling privilege and mutual suffering during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (China Leadership Monitor, No. 36, January 6, 2012). To the extent that the two also might share ideological conditionings and convictions, Liu Yuan’s February 4 article bodes well for Xi’s future management of the East China Sea tensions.

Conclusion

Radar-locking incidents aside, Beijing’s behavior in recent weeks seems aimed at calming tensions. The opacity of the Chinese party-state and military make the incidents on January 19 and January 30 difficult to explain with certainty. Pointing radars at the Japanese helicopter and warship may have been a messy local interpretation of an ongoing centrally-mandated strategy to increase pressure on Japan around the islands, though the MFA and MND’s denials at least show the central leadership is not willing to endorse such actions openly. It is also possible that the delayed official response was a stratagem aimed at projecting a false impression of dysfunction, or of the PLA having acted unilaterally. Whatever the case, the propaganda windfall for Japan has been rich. China appears reckless, aggressive and dangerous, despite having reached out diplomatically, pacified domestic public opinion and scaled back its maritime incursions over the past few weeks. A lack of direct management of the issue by a central leadership with an immense domestic policy burden is most likely part of the explanation. Circulating General Liu Yuan’s 18th Congress study notes, with their powerful warning against “some accidental incident” derailing the Chinese Dream of a great national rejuvenation, is one step Beijing could now be taking to prevent a recurrence.

Sources:

Asahi, January 16

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201301160060

Asahi, February 4

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201302040089

Asahi, February 6

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201302060075

AP, January 25

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/2013/01/25/chinese-envoy-japan-dispute-can-controlled/4mkgyb3SB2L8OzZIMRWiYO/story.html

CCTV, January 16

http://news.cntv.cn/program/xwlb/20130116

CCTV, January 17

http://cctv.cntv.cn/lm/wanjianxinwen/20130117.shtml

CCTV, January 22

http://cctv.cntv.cn/lm/dongfangshikong/20130122.shtml

China Leadership Monitor, No.36

http://www.hoover.org/publications/china-leadership-monitor/article/104206

The Diplomat, February 8

http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/08/how-involved-is-xi-jinping-in-the-diaoyu-crisis-3/?all=true

Daily Yomiuri, December 5

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T121204004532.htm

Daily Yomiuri, February 7

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T130209002868.htm

Global Times, January 16 (Chinese)

http://opinion.huanqiu.com/editorial/2013-01/3494346.html

English version: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/756065.shtml

Global Times, January 22 (Chinese)

http://opinion.huanqiu.com/opinion_world/2013-01/3567769.html

English version: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/759835.shtml

Global Times, February 4 (Chinese)

http://opinion.huanqiu.com/opinion_world/2013-02/3614115.html

Global Times, February 8 (Chinese)

http://opinion.huanqiu.com/editorial/2013-02/3630648.html

English summary: http://chinascope.org/main/content/view/5239/104/

Japan Times, January 19

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20130119a7.html

Jiji Press, January 30

https://pinboard.in/cached/8cdc7083597a/

Kyodo, February 11

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/02/208620.html

Japan MOFA, December 18, 2012

http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/position_paper2_en.html

Japan MOFA, February 7

http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/position_paper3_en.html

NHK, January 7

https://www.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20130107_22.html

National Defense News, December 17, 2012 (Chinese)

http://www.chinamil.com.cn/gfbmap/content/2012-12/17/content_22363.htm

People’s Daily, January 17 (Chinese)

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2013-01/17/nbs.D110000renmrb_01.htm?div=-1

People’s Daily, January 26 (Chinese)

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2013-01/26/nw.D110000renmrb_20130126_1-01.htm?div=-1

People’s Daily, January 26a (Chinese)

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2013-01/26/nw.D110000renmrb_20130126_2-03.htm

U.S. State Department, January 18

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2013/01/203050.htm

Reuters, January 16

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/us-china-hawks-idUSBRE90G00C20130117

South China Morning Post, January 11

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1125047/japan-scrambles-fighters-pla-jets-near-disputed-diaoyu-islands

South China Morning Post, January 21

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1132584/pla-step-war-preparedness-military-exercises-have-become-show

South China Morning Post, January 23

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1133946/japanese-envoy-yamaguchi-offers-shelve-dispute-over-diaoyus

South China Morning Post, January 24

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1134687/state-media-doubts-japans-sincerity-ease-tension-over-diaoyu-islands

State Oceanic Administration, January 19 (Chinese)

http://www.soa.gov.cn/xw/hyyw_90/201301/t20130119_23786.html

State Oceanic Administration, January 30 (Chinese)

http://www.soa.gov.cn/xw/hyyw_90/201301/t20130130_23848.html

Sydney Morning Herald, December 5, 2012

http://www.smh.com.au/world/fresh-south-china-sea-dispute-20121205-2aupd.html#ixzz2EAC3UT00

Sydney Morning Herald, February 7

http://www.smh.com.au/world/japans-pm-condemns-targeting-of-warship-20130206-2dynv.html

Xinhua, February 9

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-02/09/c_132162336.htm

[Updated 16 Jan 3.45pm BST]

On Tuesday afternoon the Chinese online media, led by Huanqiu Wang (Global Times Net), started reporting, “Japan official explicitly states for first time that warning shots will be fired at Chinese planes“.

HQW’s reporter Wang Huan 王欢 quoted the Asahi Shimbun website quoting Defense Minister Onodera, when asked about warning shots, replying that “any country would make this response if its airspace was intruded upon”.

Onodera’s comment may well have been coaxed out of him by reporters looking for a juicy headline, as it comes across as a contradiction of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga’s comment last week as reported by CNS (the other Xinhua) as reported by CNS that there were no plans for firing warning shots.

According to the Chinese internet media headlines that have relayed the story, Suga “denied” 否认 plans to fire warning shots, but now Onodera has “explicitly confirmed” 明确表态 that they will occur.

The news that Japan “will fire warning shots” was still the top splash on HQW’s website more than 12 hours later:

Whether Onodera’s statement has been reported accurately or not, the result is that the Diaoyu ball game now rests with the PRC, and the party-state is playing on a big-time court with a packed house looking on.

.

Presumably Xi Jinping would be directly overseeing a central response to a matter of such grave importance as the possibility of shots being fired over Diaoyu, though it’s probably impossible to know for sure. One would imagine he, as CMC Chairman, would have an opinion on whether to send the CMS/PLAAF/both instructions to:
1.) enter the Diaoyu/Senkaku 12nm zone; or
2.) stay out of the 12nm zone, or
3.) enter and proceed according to some contingency plan, e.g exit if warning shots are fired; or
4.) whatever other plans they may have and which I haven’t heard of or imagined, eg. “fly in there and take one for the great revival, son”.

There is, i guess, a small possibility that no central directions will be sent out from the PBSC under Xi. Perhaps the idea of the PLAAF flying to within 12nm of Diaoyu has already been discussed and discounted by the CMC. Perhaps the MFA will be left to coordinate a purely diplomatic response. But these seem unlikely.

Crucially, the reason the ball is so firmly in Xi’s court is not Onodera’s statement itself, but the reporting of it in Mainland China. It will be fascinating to see how the coverage pans out. The fact that the story was mentioned on CCTV’s evening news last night is an early indication that the PRC regime may be happy for attention to continue to mount over the question.

[UPDATE 16/1 2pm BST: the Global Times website is now describing the possibility of tracer bullets as Japanese media "hype" in its lead headline, though the story does not refute the significance of Onodera's comment, rather focusing on the fact that he "didn't specifically refer to China".]

The comments are plentiful on Tencent’s portal, the web version with 7,600+ comments in around 12 hours make that 8900+ in 14 hours — that’s 1300 comments in the past couple of hours, in the middle of the night. [UPDATE: Now, the following day it has 10,000+ comments from 177,000+ "participants", making it the website's third-most commented story of the week, and i've observed no censorship among the top comments since i tuned in.] Top comments from Tencent’s readers, known as a younger and less-educated demographic according to industry insiders:

Evacuate all Chinese people (华人) from Japan, seize all Japanese businesses in China, and out Level 1 state of war-preparation, prepare the people for war, amend the outdated nuclear policy, submarines do 2nd-strike preparations, and stop pointlessly gabbling with dogs, click on the right to support. [74,005 supports]

I somehow feel that China has gone into a diplomatic dead end, no friends, no allies, no foreign leaders visiting, and no-one going out and visiting other countries, while Japan and America’s diplomacy is blossoming, bearing huge fruits, and where are we? [24,650]

“China official explicitly states warning shots will be fired at Japanese planes” — this headline being sent out by the Chinese government would be great. [12,840]

To those still buying Japanese goods and cars, can you see the situation clearly now? Don’t be so goddamn blind! [11,383]

Over at Phoenix’s burnt-out shell of a comment zone, where heavy censorship seems to have led many readers not to bother commenting (that is, in the minority of cases where comments are even enabled), 89,000 “participants” was enough to put the story in 5th place for the week. Most of the top comments, predictably, are predicting war, with the #1 explicitly raising the General Staff Headquarters’ well-publicised exhortation in the PLA Daily on Monday to “make preparations to fight a war“. Comment #5 hit the nail on the head:

There is no dodging out of it now, let’s see how China deals with this Japan that will not back off. [6368]

All of this, the airborne actions taken thus far + internet media + Onodera’s comment + the HQSB editorials, could conceivably end up being the start of an uncontrollable escalation.

Because of the media attention, the Chinese leadership’s decision is going to be a very public one, and any backdown will require the party-state to use its huge discursive resources to deflect attention from the issue.

Hopefully the PRC will stay out of the 12nm zone, perhaps settling instead for a steady stream of non-shooting confrontations in Japan’s claimed Air Defense ID Zone, which extends far from Diaoyu and within which Japan has little grounds to actually take action against PRC jets. Perhaps that could, like the drumbeat of CMS and FLEC maritime patrols, end up being sufficient to sustain a basic narrative of continued PRC action.

But this time i actually do buy the Global Times’ argument that if shots were fired, the CCP regime would be compelled to retaliate. Unlike the GT, however, i wouldn’t attribute this to the Chinese public opinion alone. Shots fired in the Diaoyus would be a massive media event, and this in turn would significantly shape the Mainland Chinese public’s reaction.

Moreover, aside from the General Staff Headquarters’ “preparation” instruction, it appears that the duo of HQSB/Global Times editorials on Thursday and Friday last week, “Japan tracer bullets will bring war closer” and “Sendjng military planes to Diaoyu is following mainstream public sentiment” (aka “China ready for worst-case Diaoyu scenario”) have played a big part in bringing the situation to where it is now — awaiting a decision by “China” as to whether to back off by avoiding the 12nm zone, or go in and allow shots to be fired.

There is no chance of warning shots being fired and then kept under wraps. A hotline might have offered a way for the governments to collude at the last minute to cover it up…but no, that initiative was shelved in October.

April, 2012: Vice President Xi Jinping Meets with the Japanese Association for the Promotion of International Trade Delegation

Last week the New York Times ran a story on how Ling Jihua’s attempt to cover up his son’s death in that Ferrari crash may have severely weakened Hu Jintao’s position during this year’s CCP leadership transition.

It might just be me and my island-centricness, but this story certainly didn’t seem to be following the inverted-pyramid rule, for only those readers who persisted to the very last paragraph (or read the Sinocism China Newsletter) would have learned that:

By September, party insiders said, Mr. Hu was so strained by the Ling affair and the leadership negotiations that he seemed resigned to yielding power. As Mr. Hu’s influence faded, Mr. Xi began taking charge of military affairs, including a group coordinating China’s response to the escalating row with Japan over disputed islands.

Given both the vital role Ling had played in managing the logistics of the General Secretary’s day-to-day activities, and the likely emotional toll of the death of a close associate’s son, this idea of a Human Jintao feeling the pinch is logical enough.

Although the Times‘ sources say Ling’s replacement as CCP General Office Director, Li Zhanshu, arrived in July, the public announcement of Ling’s reassignment from the post was only made on September 1. Then Noda reached his agreement with the Kurihara family to make the purchase on September 4. Could all this explain Xi Jinping’s lack of a public appearance between September 2 and September 12? If i were gearing up to take over as CCP General Secretary in a few months’ time and then found myself taking charge of the country’s response to a rapidly-escalating crisis, i’d have trouble finding time for photo ops.

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If the New York Times sources are correct (and if the paper has accurately reflected their words), then the response that Xi was coordinating was probably laid down by Hu Jintao. The China Leadership Monitor’s rock-solid Michael Swaine has discussed, on the basis of “knowledgeable Chinese observers”, the PRC’s decision-making system in international crisis situations. The process is believed to start with the General Secretary convening an enlarged Politburo Standing Committee meeting, with trusted advisers and, if there are “significant military issues” at stake, the two Central Military Commission Vice Chairmen with or without their staff.

“The purpose of this initial senior-level meeting,” Swaine writes, “is to understand and determine the features and significance of the crisis, and to agree upon a set of principles and guidelines for handling it.” This is believed to be the point at which China’s basic objectives, interests and “thresholds for certain actions” are worked out.

If this is how PRC leadership developed its response to Diaoyu in 2012, then such a meeting would have taken place well before September. It could have taken place in April after Ishihara’s original announcement that the Tokyo government was planning to buy the islands, or in July after Noda publicly indicated that the Japanese central government was considering making the purchase. More likely, it would have been whenever China’s diplomats or spies reported convincing enough evidence that Japan was actually going to go through with the plan. Whatever the precise timing, the CCP knew about Japan’s nationalization plan months in advance, so the initial meeting laying down the “set of principles and guidelines for handling” the crisis would almost certainly have been convened and chaired by Hu Jintao.

According to Swaine, when the crisis is a relatively slow-moving one, as Diaoyu 2012 was, the relevant Leading Small Group (in this case Foreign Affairs) is often assigned the task of overseeing the ongoing management of China’s response over the weeks and months that follow. However, an additional ad hoc working group dedicated to the crisis may be formed if and when the General Secretary deems it necessary. The Times‘ sources told the paper that by September Xi Jinping “had began taking charge of military affairs, including a group coordinating China’s response”, suggesting this may have been the case. If Swaine’s description of ad hoc group formation applies to Diaoyu, then the working group Xi took over would also have been set up by Hu Jintao.

Most importantly, the Times‘ sources do not seem to have intimated that Xi taking over the Diaoyu response resulted in a noteworthy shift in policy. This also supports the idea that the existing reactive, non-military approach to the crisis was subject to strong consensus.

If the tolerance of this year’s anti-Japan street protests was, as the previous post suggested, a foreign policy tactic, the sequence of events described by the New York Times make it likely to have been a Hu Jintao-backed initiative because the mobilizations actully began back in mid-August, before Xi Jinping is supposed to have taken over. The PRC under Hu has form in using anti-Japan demonstrations to its advantage in the international arena. (On the other hand, the switch from Hu to Xi sounds like it happened somewhat progressively so by mid-August Hu may already have been weakened such that he was unable to suppress the protests even if he opposed them. This would have offered the chance for contending groups within the leadership to improve their positions. The next post will consider such alternative explanations for the protests.)

The basic continuity between Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’s foreign policy stances contradicts the China-watching media’s rather more dramatic narrative of a nationalist hardliner now in control of China. On Thursday, for example, the FT told the world:

On foreign policy, Mr Xi, who is due to replace Mr Hu as president in March, has adopted more nationalist rhetoric than his predecessors.

So what exactly has Xi said that has been “more nationalist” than his predecessors?

While Deng and other leaders stressed that China should keep its head down and “bide its time” in international affairs, Mr Xi has spoken emphatically of the “great revival of the Chinese nation”.

This idea that Xi’s “great revival” talk indicates he will run a hardline foreign policy is hasty to say the least. What evidence is there linking the great revival discourse with foreign policy aggression?

Chiang Kai-shek, ostensibly the inventor of the national humiliation/revival discourse, justifiably wanted to abolish extraterritoriality but he didn’t try to drive foreigners into the sea. Instead, he allied with them against his domestic enemies, the Communists. Under Jiang Zemin, we are often reminded, the CCP (re-)introduced nationalism to “fill the ideological vacuum” after the abandonment of communism. But Jiang pursued national revival (which he called 振兴 rather than 复兴 until late 1997) by focusing on domestic development, encouraging increased foreign involvement in China’s economy, and officially enshrining the low-profile taoguang-yanghui foreign policy principle more often attributed to Deng.

And of course Hu Jintao, Xi’s allegedly less “nationalist” predecessor, mentioned “the great revival of the Chinese nation” 23 times in a single speech last year, and 9 times in his report to the 18th Party Congress in November.

The great revival discourse, as Gregory Kulacki recently pointed out, has important socialist elements that outside observers often overlook when they assume China has simply abandoned its founding ideology:

The aims of the Chinese Renaissance are fairly modest; to achieve the status of a “basically modern” nation whose citizens enjoy a “medium level” of economic development by the middle of this century.

Such a pragmatic, domestic orientation is readily apparent in Xi’s use of the concept. His repeated emphasis on the great revival began with the crackdown on corruption he outlined in the first Politburo group study session after the 18th Congress: “A mass of facts tells us that if corruption becomes increasingly serious, it will inevitably doom the party and the state!” Xi is quoted as saying (NYT translation, with exclamation mark re-inserted from the Chinese original). Clearly, foreign policy assertiveness is not the only means for Xi Jinping to demonstrate his credentials as a leader who rules for the people.

To me it seems equally possible that Xi Jinping’s “nationalist” rhetoric, backed up by already-conspicuous action against corruption, will give him breathing space to lead China to pursue more cooperative relations with the US and/or lower the temperature in its territorial disputes, if and when he decides it is in the PRC’s interests. That would follow a similar logic to Nixon in 1972, whose staunch anti-communism is generally assumed to have been crucial in enabling him to make his breakthrough trip to China. A more recent precedent is perhaps Shinzo Abe in 2006, who warmed relations with China after coming to power, despite a hardline reputation and some tough talk on foreign policy during the election campaign.

It is not a good time to be making this argument. Thursday’s fly-past by a China Maritime Surveillance (civilian) plane over the Diaoyu Islands is a sign that i may be proved completely wrong in short order. The FT’s Simon Rabinovich claims that because Xi Jinping visited the Guangzhou Military Region this week and talked about the need for China to have a strong military (also not new), there is “little doubt about who was behind the order for the Chinese surveillance flight”. As a unilateral escalation by China, this would mark a clear break with the previous policy of advancing in maritime territorial disputes via fierce responses to external provocations.

To this point, however, Xi Jinping has been continuing with Hu Jintao’s foreign policy. After all, it is Hu Jintao’s 18th Congress Work Report that is being cited by self-interested PRC policy players as the basis for intensification of a range of maritime activities, from strengthened patrols to inter-provincial cooperative fisheries facilities and construction on disputed islands. For a CMS force pushing hard for upgraded aerial surveillance capacities, as well as state aircraft status, it could easily justify a flight or two to Diaoyu and back.

As the immediate crises over Scarborough and Diaoyu have passed, and the new leadership settle down to concentrate on their overwhelmingly important domestic agendas, central coordination of China’s foreign policy actions may have slackened, allowing the five/nine/eleven dragons of the China Seas to recommence their stirring routines.

“New facts on the water”

In last week’s Sinica Podcast, M. Taylor Fravel discussed the March 1988 Sino-Vietnamese battle in the Spratly Islands, recounting how the PLAN Commander was moved from his post afterwards as a result of his unauthorized decision to open fire on the Vietnamese Navy.

This could make the 1988 battle appear as a historical example of uncoordination in the PRC’s behaviour towards the outside world — a rogue commander taking foreign policy into his own hands. However, the decision to send the Navy in to establish a presence on unoccupied reefs in the Spratlys was a centralized, high-level one.

Today, the Chinese Navy is better equipped and better trained, so the chances of something similar happening are small. The unwavering non-involvement of the PLAN in China’s maritime territorial disputes, even as tensions have risen to boiling point, is a testament to the navy’s professionalization, and a site of consensus among China’s policymakers. The US Department of Defense in 2011 presciently pinpointed (see p.60) the increasing use of non-military law enforcement agencies to press China’s claims in disputed waters as an important component of PRC policy. Since then, this approach has become ever-more salient.

China’s maritime law enforcement fleets have long been seen as a source of policy disorganization, both within China and abroad; back in 2002, for example, the Hainan Provincial NPC delegation tabled a motion to establish a unified maritime law-enforcement fleet.

But in the podcast Fravel drew attention to how this year the China Maritime Surveillance and Fisheries Law Enforcement fleets have actually coordinated rather well, both with each other and with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in advancing China’s maritime claims.

As Professor Fravel has noted, there are significant parallels between China’s actions in the Scarborough Shoal and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. In both cases China has redefined the status quo to include its own patrol boats as a more or less permanent presence around the disputed features.

The China-Philippines standoff began in April this year when the Philippines sent its naval flagship to arrest some Chinese fishermen, but the result has been that China now for the first time has effective control of Scarborough Shoal. Following the Japanese government’s decision to purchase the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, CMS and FLEC boats have regularized their formerly occasional patrols in the waters around the islands.

Before the Diaoyu ruckus, some influential PRC media commentators had begun to discuss a “Huangyan Model” for resolving the South China Sea disputes in China’s favour. The main objection to it, from People’s Daily senior reporter Ding Gang’s perspective, was that China had not initiated the incidents and was thus being “passive”. But the real advances China has made speak for themselves.

The picture that’s emerging, then, is of a fairly well unified strategy of, in Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt’s terms, “reactive assertiveness“.

Thus, China’s strategy is opportunism — and in that sense it represents a continuation of the historical pattern of PRC actions to advance its position in maritime territorial disputes over the past 40 years:

1. China’s seizing of decisive control of the Paracel Archipelago in 1974 by evicting remnants of the all-but-vanquished South Vietnamese army;
2. The decision to establish a presence in the Spratlys in 1988 as Vietnam declined in importance to its backer the Soviet Union (see Chen Jie, 1994); and
3. The taking by stealth of Mischief Reef in 1995 when the US military had left the Philippines a little more than two years prior.

In a chilling and highly influential piece in the Wall Street Journal last month, Professor Fravel — certainly no alarmist  — warned that there remains a major danger of China using force in relation to the Diaoyu dispute. The piece explained that historically the PRC has been more likely to use force:

• against relatively powerful opponents;
• in confrontations where it has not been in possession of the disputed territory; and
• during periods of regime insecurity.

The current confrontation over the Diaoyu Islands fitted the bill on all three counts. Most important among these historical factors, the article argued, was the latter — regime insecurity:

China’s leaders today may feel on the ropes for several reasons—elite conflict at the highest levels of the ruling Chinese Communist Party; a slowing economy that undermines the legitimacy of the CCP; and a delicate transition of power from one generation of leaders to the next. These factors increase the value of using firm action to signal resolve to both Japan and the Chinese public. They also decrease Beijing’s willingness to compromise or be seen as backing down.

Let me emphasise here that Professor Fravel is the English-speaking world’s leading expert on China’s territorial disputes and i am a mere student, so i fully expect there to be all sorts of holes in the arguments that follow. Nonetheless, as a student i’m dutybound to put my logic to the test, so please do raise objections and rebuttals in the comments section.

First, the historical examples Professor Fravel was referring to were the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, which coincided with post-Great Leap Forward power struggles involving Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao and Mao, the Sino-Soviet skirmishes during the Cultural Revolution, and perhaps the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, which occurred as Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his control of the party and military. Yet since then, none of the numerous periods of elite conflict have coincided with military aggression: the 1986-87 ‘Bourgeois Liberalisation’ campaign and the ousting of General-Secretary Hu Yaobang; the 1989 Tiananmen crisis; and the 2002 handover from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. So in the reform era, elite contention doesn’t seem to have increased the likelihood of China deploying military force.

[Prof Fravel has clarified that he meant the PRC has been more likely to use force "during periods of regime insecurity *when* faced with challenges in a dispute" -- and this hasn't really happened in the reform era. Indeed (SSC speaking now) in his 2008 book Strong Borders, Secure Nation, a core element of Fravel's theory of the causes of escalation and use of force in territorial disputes is a state's perception that its already-weak relative position in relation to the disputed territory is weakening further. It is the combination of this perception with threats to regime security, that creates the incentive for resort to force.]

Second, the evidence of coordination in maritime territorial policy canvassed above, plus the clear advancement of China’s position on the water this year, and the decisiveness with which the party-state reacted following the Diaoyu purchase, all suggest that the current opportunistic, non-military approach is the subject of a broad and strong consensus among the Party leadership, if not the military. If so, then the outlook may not be as grim as Fravel and others have recently been warning.

Third, if the current policy was already the subject of relatively strong consensus within the leadership back in September, then the hardline rhetoric, provocative media reporting, and tolerance of public anti-Japan mobilizations were more likely part of that strategy than an attempt by leaders to head off or preempt opposition from within the Party or among the public. In the WSJ piece Fravel wrote:

China has used force in territorial disputes during periods of regime insecurity, when leaders have a greater incentive to show resolve: They believe that opposing states seek to take advantage of China’s domestic woes, and that a weak or limited response might increase popular discontent.

The angry rhetoric, protests and public attention on the issue may have been intended to create precisely that impression: the idea that because no-one among the leadership could afford to look weak, they would be compelled to respond strongly, even to the point of starting a war, if China’s ships were interfered with in the Diaoyu Islands.

Of course, if a maritime clash occurs it will indeed be difficult for either side to back down. But China has in the past 18 months shown no special desire to engage in actual incidents at sea. Therefore, in order to compel Japan to accept the new status quo, in addition to economic diplomacy, China looks to have created a strategic logic somewhat analogous to MAD, convincing the outside world that if an incident involving the CMS or FLEC occurs, the PRC will almost definitely escalate, and the situation will spiral out of control.

At present, then, the PRC is wielding the risk of escalation to its advantage, which helps explain why it continues to stall progress on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. Such a Code would institute a binding procedure for de-escalating incidents that would deny China this threat of inevitable yet unpredictable consequences of opposing its law enforcement vessels.

The same logic was on display during the Scarborough Shoal dispute earlier this year, when China, through a combination of economic diplomacy, harsh diplomatic rhetoric, a wave of outrage in the media and online, and a hint of possible street protests, convinced the Philippines that it had no choice but to back down.

The result, to date, has indeed been acceptance of the new status quo by the Philippines and Japan.

This may be a high-wire act. The mere fact China tries to signal that compromise is out of the question does not make this untrue. In stoking public anger and ordering media attention on the issues, Beijing could in effect be deliberately subjecting itself to another form of “supervision by public opinion” to help consolidate its position on the water.

This all hinges on the assumption that a basic consensus existed around not only the non-use of military force the Diaoyu confrontation, but also the role of manifestations of “nationalistic” fervour in helping seize opportunities to change the status quo. Given the Hu-Wen regime’s obsession with “safeguarding stability”, it was perhaps surprising that street protests were allowed at such a sensitive time as August-September 2012. It could have been a sign of the regime’s belief in the utility of, and confidence in its ability to control, publicmobilization. But in the next post i will consider the possibility that elite contention, rather than consensus, may have been behind the tolerance of the anti-Japan street protests.

For now, the policy lesson for countries managing disputes with the PRC may be: if you want to hold your position, don’t give China an opportunity to get outraged.

New PRC e-passport and old version

Students of PRC foreign policy constantly come up against the question of whether the actions of the Chinese state are the result of decisions made by the centralised leadership or individual state agencies.

Linda Jakobson and Dean Knox’s 2010 SIPRI report, ‘New Foreign Policy Actors in China‘ provided an excellent overview of the range of players on the Chinese foreign policy scene. Taking a similar approach in relation to the South China Sea issue, the International Crisis Group’s ‘Stirring up the Sea (I)‘ report earlier this year emphasised the incoherence that can result from individual (and sometimes competing) agencies acting according to their own priorities rather than a consistent centralized policy.

In the PRC’s latest diplomatic disaster, images embedded on the visa pages of the PRC’s new passports have managed to simultaneously provoke the official ire of Vietnam, the Philippines, India and Taiwan.

Close-up of nine-dash line depiction in new People’s Republic of China passport

The two South China Sea claimants have protested the inclusion of a map including the nine-dash line representing China’s “territory” in the disputed sea, India disputes the maps’ depiction of Arunachal Pradesh as part of Tibet, and the passports’ pictures of Taiwan landmarks prompted rare expressions of anger from Ma Ying-jeou and the ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council.

This looks to be a classic case of policy uncoordination resulting from a domestically-focused agency taking actions that directly impinge on other countries’ interests. From the FT’s report breaking the story:

China’s ministry of public security oversees the design and issuing of the new Chinese passports, according to an official at the Chinese foreign ministry who declined to comment further.

The next day the Guardian quoted MFA spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying, “The outline map of China on the passport is not directed against any particular country.” Yet neither the Chinese nor the English versions of the official transcript of Hua’s November 23 press conference include the comment, suggesting that the Foreign Ministry remained disinclined to take responsibility for the move.

The SIPRI and ICG reports mentioned above didn’t focus much attention on the Ministry of Public Security as a player in PRC foreign policy, but it has certainly become one, inadvertently or otherwise.

MFA spokeswoman Hua Chunying in November 23 press conference

Possible strategic benefits to the PRC from this passport move have been pointed out. Ben Bland, for example, one of the authors of the FT’s scoop, tweeted that

When Vietnam/Philippines stamp visiting Chinese passports, they implicitly validate nine-dash line claim

However, that’s exactly what Vietnam has been refusing to do at its border crossings, instead issuing “loose leaf” travel permits on separate pieces of paper. At Lao Cai officials have even been stamping Chinese visitors’ passports as “invalid”, and India, meanwhile, has been stamping the passports with its own version of where the border between the two countries should lie.

Phoenix TV, which normally positions itself as either hardline or supportive of the government, actually ran a relatively long editorial criticizing the passports for creating unnecessary inconvenience for Chinese travellers.

The kneejerk e-nationalists on Phoenix and Tencent news portal comment threads absolutely loved the move — probably the best indication that it was strategically witless.

Top Phoenix comments from story headlined, ‘New Chinese passport sketches South China Sea sovereignty, Vietnam and Philippines protest claiming “violation of sovereignty” ‘ (13,979 participants/238 comments):

I support this measure by the government!! Long live! [3761 recommends]

You can not go those two countries [Vietnam and the Philippines], but you cannot not support this [2383]

Support the Chinese government taking some action in foreign policy!!! [1283]

etc.

And top Tencent comments from story with almost exactly the same headline (41,355 participants/3349 comments):

Strongly support the government’s affirmation of sovereignty, sovereignty cannot be negotiated over, what should be taken back should be taken back with no mercy! [. . .etc. . .] [12,520 supports]

This move is good, ya, [. . . etc. . . ] [5826]

I support the new passports! We absolutely cannot compromise or let up! If we don’t go to those countries that don’t recognize our passports, we can go to other countries just the same! [. . . etc. . . ] [3930]

etc.

Once again, Netease commenters, and/or their editors, proved themselves to be of a quite different persuasion to the other forums. Top comments from ‘Vietnam refuses entry to a number of Chinese citizens with new passports‘ (8706 participants/376 comments):

Wow, with this kind of weather forecast, little Vietnam will be nervous! [2774 dings]

Ding me and you get rich today! Ding me and a corrupt official dies! [1554]

Just put the whole of Vietnam’s territory on our map! <— in reply to — Better to include the whole world, the whole Milky Way galaxy, the whole universe. You’ll be the most badass if you sit inside your house, clutch your map of the universe and fight to the death! [1387]

I want to know if the Diaoyu Islands have been put on that map, let everyone who goes into and our of Japan get it verified by the Japanese government. If it hasn’t been put on the map, don’t ever “protest, denounce” again! [688]

I imagine this episode may end up being cited as an example of the PRC government “appeasing” nationalist public opinion in its foreign policy. Certainly the it seems to be popular with those who will likely never actually need to make use of a passport.

But if this move accords with nationalistic sections of public opinion, it is a case of correlation without causation. The new e-passports have been in circulation since May this year, but almost nobody inside or outside China seems to have noticed the barely-visible maps until last week. The authorities certainly haven’t been claiming any nationalist credits for their inclusion up to this point, as some quick news archive searches make clear.

New Chinese passport with nine-dash-line map in top-left (Reuters via Guardian)

As the Ministry of Public Security performed their ostensibly mundane task of producing travel documents for Chinese citizens they had no choice but to include the nine-dash line and Arunachal Pradesh; to do otherwise would have rendered the passports illegal maps.

Robert S. Ross built a reputation over the 1980s and 1990s as one of the leading realist analysts of Chinese foreign policy. He published a seminal article in 1986 highlighting the importance of the US-USSR-PRC “security triangle” in explaining China’s behaviour under Deng Xiaoping, and after the Cold War made a successful switch into the richer and murkier terrain of the domestic security situation of the CCP leadership and its relationship to Chinese foreign policy.

Ross’s shift in emphasis towards the importance of domestic factors in explaining China’s behaviour towards the outside world was foreshadowed in his 1986 piece, which noted:

The relative importance of domestic politics has been a function of the range of choice allowed by the pattern of triangular politics [ie. the international environment]. When the range of choice was narrow, domestic politics had a small impact on China’s US policy. When the choices expanded, domestic critics wielded greater influence on foreign policy making.

In recent years, this Boston College professor and Harvard Fairbank Center associate has become fixated on the idea of nationalistic public opinion as a singular driving force behind the Communist Party’s foreign policy.

One early example was 2009′s ‘China’s Naval Nationalism’, which argued the  PLA Navy’s modernization, especially its aircraft carrier program, was irrational and against China’s national interest. Instead, Ross wrote, “widespread nationalism, growing social instability, and the leadership’s concern for its political legitimacy drive China’s naval ambition”. This contention provoked a lengthy response from Michael Glosny and Phillip Saunders, who pointed out a range of national interest arguments that could be made for China’s naval modernization.

Ross was evidently unmoved by this critique, for in a 2011 piece in the National Interest he produced a greatly expanded list of PRC foreign policy actions allegedly designed to appease nationalist public opinion. Although there is no question that domestic public opinion, including its loudly hawkish trends, form an element of the CCP leadership’s decision-making environment, there are obvious interest-based explanations for each of the examples on Ross’s list:

• The Impeccable incident in the South China Sea, in which a motley flotilla of fishing boats and patrol ships harassed a US surveillance ship. (Forget the undesirability, from the PRC’s strategic perspective, of having US surveillance ships gathering data on its new submarine facilities at the bottom end of Hainan Island.)
• China’s intransigence at the Copenhagen climate change conference. (Never mind that the PRC’s delegation was led by the National Development and Reform Commission, which has responsibility for China’s economic planning and thus a vested interest against binding carbon reduction targets. And ignore the repeated studies showing Chinese people to be relatively climate-aware.)
• The harsh reaction to the announcement of US arms sales to Taiwan in 2010. (Disregard how US military support for Taiwan stands between the PRC and fulfillment of its “sacrosanct mission” of “national reunification”.)
• China’s repeated strong protests against joint US-Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea in June-July 2010. (Also cited as an example of media-driven nationalist influence by Michael Swaine & M. Taylor Fravel, though China wound back its statements somewhat when further exercises were announced in November 2010.)
• The PRC’s lack of denouncement of North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan. (Nothing to do with North Korea’s status as China’s only true ally in East Asia.)
• The party-state’s overreaction to the September 2010 detention of Captain Zhan, the Chinese fisherman who rammed a Japanese Coastguard vessel near the Diaoyu Islands. (Japan’s deviation from the established precedent of quickly releasing detained Chinese fishermen must have been irrelevant, likewise the opportunity this offered for China to use its burgeoning maritime law enforcement fleets to advance its sovereignty claims.)
• Denouncing the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. (Liu’s jailing for criticizing the Chinese government was presumably won widespread praise from nationalist critics of the Chinese government.)
• The treatment of Google. (Unrelated to the latter’s refusal to censor its search results.)

“[T]he source of all the aggressive Chinese diplomacy,” wrote Ross, is “the party’s effort to appease China’s nationalists”.

The same dubious list has been extended and wheeled out again in the latest edition of one of the US’s top foreign policy journals Foreign Affairs, along with a number of related misperceptions, in a piece called ‘The Problem With the Pivot’.

For the benefit of any time-stretched readers, my problems with Ross’s argument, detailed below, are that it:

1. Relies on the mistaken premise that there has been a severe economic downturn in China since 2009, from which a legitimacy crisis has ensued.
2. Wrongly assumes that China’s assertive foreign policy actions are seen as such by nationalist sections of Chinese public opinion.
3. Discounts the huge strategic and economic interests China has, or perceives it has, in advancing its claims to disputed islands and maritime space.
4. Claims, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, that the Chinese party-state is unable to prevent anti-foreign protests.
5. Argues that the recent protests over Diaoyu caused the PRC’s foreign policy escalation, without considering the uses that such protests can serve in advancing the government’s foreign policy objectives.

~

Ross’s argument hinges on the idea that deteriorating economic conditions in China have led the CCP state to make a play for nationalist legitimacy through foreign policy assertiveness. In 2009-10, readers are told, “China experienced the worst economic turmoil since the 1960s, following Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward” during which time “inflation increased more than tenfold”. What readers are not told is that in those two years the Chinese economy actually grew by 9.2 and 10.4 percent, and that inflation was actually negative throughout most of 2009, and remained well below the long-term average of 4.26 percent until November 2010. It has fallen back steadily to just under 2 percent as of mid-2012.

The downturn of 2009-2010 barely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other periods of economic challenge in reform-era China. During the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s, for example, China’s GDP growth dropped to 7.7 percent across 1998 and 1999. Ten years before that, through the political turmoil of 1989, China’s economic growth plunged to less than 4 percent, with inflation in the high teens in both 1988 and 1989 before being controlled the following year

This is not simply a case of statistics hiding the true nature of the present-day Chinese economy. The Pew Global Attitudes poll has asked Chinese respondents (urban-weighted) three separate questions about their economic situation most years since 2007. None of the results indicate any decline in respondents’ perceptions of their own economic wellbeing or outlook over the 2009-2010 period. To say that Ross exaggerates the severity of the economic downturn in China over the key period of the party-state’s alleged pursuit of nationalist kudos would be an understatement.

Interpreting such measures as appeasement of domestic nationalist demands suggests a basic misreading of Chinese public opinion. It assumes that actions that may be seen as aggressive outside China are also perceived as strong and praiseworthy within China. But on the contrary, as the online conversations translated here consistently indicate, the government’s fierce diplomatic protests and limited, nonmilitary countermeasures are usually viewed as weak and cowardly among the nationalist-leaning sections of Mainland public — the very people that China’s recent assertive behaviour is supposed to be aimed at impressing.

One of the more astonishing claims resulting from Ross’s prefabricated assumption that a nationalist legitimacy ploy is guiding China’s foreign policy, is his dismissal of the strategic and economic significance of the Spratly and Diaoyu Islands:

[T]hese islands have little economic value (apart from fishing) and no mineral resources, and they are of minor strategic importance since they are too small to support military activities … Like the Spratly Islands, these [Diaoyu] islands are of little strategic or economic value.

Firstly, as the events this year at Scarborough Shoal and Diaoyu have made clear, fishing is anything but parenthetical in China’s island disputes. According to FAO statistics from 2004, Chinese fishers took 3.6 million tons of fish from the South China Sea, representing 25 percent of the country’s catch, and 34 percent came from the East China Sea. In 2007, Philippine and Malaysian fleets each took more than $1 billion worth of fish from the South China Sea area, while seafood accounted for 7 percent of Vietnam’s exports in 2010.

The value of South China Sea fisheries to regions that host fishing communities or associated industries is enormous, particularly given the dwindling coastal fish stocks in many of the South China Sea claimant countries. Local governments in China and Vietnam, for example, provide subsidies to encourage fisherfolk to venture into disputed waters, and the Hainan provincial government’s Fisheries Research Institute has argued China’s take should be increased, calling for 1450 additional boats to be sent to fish the South China Sea.

There are already producing oil and gas wells in the immediate vicinity of the Spratly Islands, operated by the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. The three countries are estimated to take 30 million tons of oil from the South China Sea each year, and the Philippines’ explorations in the Reed Bank have gone well this year. Ross would surely be aware that the US Geological survey has estimated there could be 28 billion barrels of oil beneath the South China Sea (and 100 million in the East China Sea), and that Chinese estimates are much higher.

However, Ross denies the strategic significance of oil and gas generally. In ‘China’s Naval Nationalism’, he argued that China’s own supplies of coal, along with hydroelectric and nuclear power, can supply China with “nearly all of its energy requirements”. He went on to point out: “China relies on imported oil for less than 10 percent of its total energy usage, and an increasing share of this oil comes across land borders with Central Asia and Russia.” Will Rogers, too, has outlined reasons to expect a decline in the future importance of fossil fuels. But Rogers, an energy policy expert, also recognizes that China appears to be betting on them nonetheless: “Whether those hydrocarbon resources in the South China Sea are strategically important or not, the perception in Beijing seems to be that they are vital.”

Ten percent of China’s total energy usage is no inconsequential figure. And one only need consider some of the powerful vested interests involved in securing the PRC’s oil supplies, among them a troika of giant SOEs with combined revenues of about RMB 4.7 trillion, to imagine how China’s foreign policy may not simply be made according to singular strategies like the pursuit of legitimacy. If China’s strategic energy policy is irrational or sub-optimal, massive vested interests offer a much stronger explanation for this than an all-out attempt to impress nationalist public opinion.

Overlooked, too, are the strategic advantages that future control of the South China Sea and/or East China Sea would offer the PRC. It is not only China that relies on long-distance seaborne trade routes, but also its neighbourhood rivals. Dominating the two seas would not only eliminate the PRC’s own reliance on sea lanes currently controlled by its strategic rivals, it would put Beijing in a position to threaten economic supply lines to Japan, not to mention denying the US Navy its preferred thoroughfare between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. There is also the matter of the Chinese Navy’s submarine strategy, to which Tetsuo Kotani has argued the deep waters of the South China Sea may be integral.

During the 2010 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands crisis, when a Chinese fishing boat captain was detained after ramming a Japanese patrol boat, protests up to several hundred strong took place in several cities. Ross notes that, “Despite the state’s attempts to quell them, calls for protests circulated on the Internet, sparking demonstrations in front of not only the Japanese embassy but also the Chinese Foreign Ministry building (emphasis added).” The assumption here is that the Chinese state has no power to prevent the outbreak of such protests, or their organization through the internet. Yet the protesters on the scene were reportedly outnumbered four-to-one by police, who subsequently shut them down after about an hour, strongly suggesting the state had remained more-or-less fully in control all along.

In relation to this year’s Sino-Japanese crisis, following the Japanese government’s nationalization of the Diaoyu islands, Ross pins the protests in cities across China as the cause of the PRC’s assertive moves to advance its claims. According to Ross, “This nationalist outcry led Beijing to escalate tensions with Japan,” by sending government surveillance ships and fishing boats to the disputed area. This not only neglects the advancement in China’s position in relation to its claims to the Diaoyu Islands, it gives no consideration to the ways in which the protests were provoked and guided by the PRC government itself.

Television, a state-controlled medium, is still the primary source of international news for the general public in Mainland China. Based on my personal observations, state TV played outrage-inducing reports about the Diaoyu situation on high rotation in the direct leadup to the protests. This television coverage alone was sufficient to send Li Weizhi, a migrant worker in Shenzhen who didn’t even know the national anthem, onto the streets and into a “nationalist” frenzy.

Smaller-scale demonstrations had occurred in the preceding days, giving the party-state ample warning, had it wished to prevent them. But on the contrary, there was a clear absence of desire to prevent the “masses” (in fact a tiny minority) from taking to the streets in what would normally be illegal gatherings under PRC law. The protests do not befit description as state-sponsored, as some have claimed (some protesters in Beijing may have been “bussed in” from work units in neighbouring Hebei, but i never met any such people in the crowds there). But they were shaped, accommodated and easily halted by the authorities. This refutes Ross’s claim that the protests caused the Chinese state’s policy response.

The reality is likely the precise opposite: allowing the protests was part of the PRC’s policy response. As Jessica Chen Weiss has shown, the People’s Republic has a successful recent history of deploying the strategic logic of anti-foreign protest: that focusing domestic popular outrage towards a particular foreign policy issue can allow an authoritarian state to demonstrate that it cannot back down from its position in international negotiations.

China’s motivation to control the Spratly Archipelago and the Diaoyu Islands is explainable without reference to a popular nationalist legitimacy ploy by a government in crisis. It may be playing a part, but if so it is a minor one, for the strategic and economic interests at stake, and the influences of vested interests, provide plenty of strong explanations for this behaviour.

Ironically, i actually agree with Ross’s thesis in ‘The Problem With the Pivot’, which argues that the US’s high-profile “return to Asia” has not been conducive to stability, instead unnecessarily antagonizing China, feeding its insecurities, creating mistrust, and strengthening the hand of more hawkish players in the country’s foreign policymaking landscape.

But the impression that Ross and others like John Lee and Susan Shirk seek to create — a tottering Chinese regime trying desperately to appease its nationalist critics in order to cling on to power — is a potentially dangerous one, for it implies that the PRC could at any time make war on a whim for reasons that defy logic. Rather than favouring mutual confidence-building and coexistence, as Ross seemingly wants to argue for, this view of Chinese foreign policy leads logically to the conclusion that trust with China is impossible, and an ever-greater China-directed military buildup the only viable option.

Thankfully, Ross’s analysis is far from the mark. Hawkish nationalist sentiment is not out of control in China.

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Side-notes:

- Ross also sloppily repeats an incorrect rumour that Japan, South Korea and Australia “participated” in the annual US-Philippines Balikatan military exercises for the first time this year. Although foreign observers from 10 countries attended, the Philippines military clarified here that the US and the Philippines were the only participants.

- I also suspect some military experts like Andrew Erickson might take issue with Ross’s confident statement that the “unable to challenge U.S. dominance at sea or upend the balance of power in the region”. Erickson and Gabe Collins recently outlined at least 10 “key indicators of Chinese progress toward building a strong regional navy”. While China’s global naval capabilities will remain restricted for the foreseeable future, they concluded, “The PLAN is acquiring the hardware it needs to prosecute a major regional naval showdown.”

- As for protests circulating online, recent high-profile research has highlighted the effectiveness of China’s decentralized internet censorship system in preventing offline mobilization.

Shenzhen rioter Li Zhiwei appears on CCTV

How does a normal migrant worker who doesn’t even know the national anthem suddenly become a nationalist rioter? One of the great things about the Chinese media is how they are willing and able to interview suspects under arrest, or in this case out on bail, to get some direct commentary on their own actions.

Henan migrant worker Li Zhiwei was one of the 20 most-wanted from the violent anti-Japanese protests in Shenzhen on September 16. According to his interview with CCTV, and the extraordinary China Youth Daily story that follows, he was the first to surrender.

This is one of many stories from the PRC official media in the past few days that appear to be aimed at lowering public animosity towards Japan, specifically:

• The People’s Daily’s [ZH]October 23 edition running the news that the Japanese Coastguard rescued 64 Chinese sailors from their burning freighter on page 3, and the Global Times’ claim that “all netizens praised Japan’s actions”;
• Global Times [ZH] and CCTV reports on October 22 emphasizing that Japanese Deputy PM Katsuya Okada had “recognized the sovereignty dispute over Diaoyu”, and the subsequent CCTV report on Okada having donated 100 million yen to the Wenchuan earthquake relief effort and had been labelled “China’s spokesman”;
• A separate CCTV story on the same day explaining clearly the view that the right-wing Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara had created the whole dispute by moving to purchase three of the Diaoyu islands and build infrastructure on them;
• Global Times [ZH] October 21 and 22 reports on the warm welcome for 2,200 Shanghai tourists who visited Japan on the weekend, which sparked an uproar (unintentionally?) from readers across PRC’s major news sites, which in turn prompted the official media’s most strident attack on anti-Japanese nationalism…
• …’Forcing others to hate Japan carries a dangerous logic‘, published on a page 2 of the October 23 CYD, which brought together most of the above to defend the Shanghai tourists and forcefully attack anti-Japanese nationalism, going so far as to equate China’s “extreme anti-Japanese figures” with Japanese right wingers. The headline even sounds like a veiled attack on the patriotic education system that does so much to demonize Japan.

In humanizing Li Zhiwei as a downtrodden battler, simple and good-hearted, the CYD story shifts the blame for the violence primarily onto the social ills of exclusion, money-worship and corruption. But, in the context of the latter article on the above list, i think it can also be read as a warning of the dangers of deliberately inflaming public sentiment in China. Since it is the official mouthpiece of the Communist Youth League, could this be a sign that Hu Jintao did not entirely approve of how the PRC media handled, or were instructed to handle, the issue? [NB on reflection 24 hours later, another strong moral of this story seems to be that there was insufficient guidance of the protests by the authorities, given that people of low educational levels (and by implication low suzhi) were taking part.]

As a case study in the nature of “nationalist” violence in China, Li’s story really speaks for itself, but for the benefit of those who don’t have time to read it start-to-finish, in the translation below i have bolded what i found to be the crucial sections.

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That step from volunteer to thug

China Youth Daily, October 17, 2012, p.10

By Chen Qian’er

Almost everyone who knows him finds it hard to associate him with the words “illegal”, “crime” and “arrest”. In his security guard job in Shenzhen he worked hard, and in only six months was promoted to team captain. When he finished work he hurried off to do volunteer work, still wearing his uniform.

But in the baodiao [protect-Diaoyu] marches in Shenzhen on September 16 this young man, who often dons the red volunteer’s vest, displayed a violent side when he participated in car-smashing.

The vehicle he smashed was a riot van parked in front of gates of the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee. Seven days later, the police published his headshot along with those of 19 other participants. The photographs occupied the entire front page of the local Jing Bao paper. He understood as soon as saw it, and took himself straight to the police station, where he was detained for the crime of troublemaking.

The police have not revealed his real name, calling him instead Li X.

Shenzhen’s most wanted: Li Zhiwei’s photo is top-left (source)

Among all the wanted smashing suspects, Li was the first to surrender. After two days in detention, the leader of his security team organized for him to be released on bail.

“He is very warm-hearted, and values loyalty,” said the person in charge at the volunteer services station, who could not believe Li had become a wanted criminal. This person remembered the first time Li came to the volunteer station; he went rushing about here and there, and had soon fixed a faulty fluorescent tube.

His heavy-browed, wide-eyed face still laughs out from among the photos of the centre’s volunteers. Sometimes he even paid with his own money to help charitable causes. The local children liked this uniformed big brother, and often shouted out, “Hello Uncle Policeman!”

On the morning of September 16, however, he had not put on his navy-blue uniform as usual. He had asked to stay in the dormitory because of a bout of gastro. But before long, he was leaving the dorm, and riding the subway to Huaqiangbei station. He had heard from a co-worker that those participating in the baodiao march were gathering there.

The human sea outside the subway station was a stunning sight. Most of the people on the street were of a similar age to him, and were carrying hand-written or printed banners, thrashing their voice boxes shouting slogans. Without hesitation, he joined the crowd.

Li was born in a village in Zhoukou, Henan Province. The family was poor, with his mother only able to earn 20 yuan a month as a substitute teacher, while his father tilled their 4 mu of land [about 2500 sq m]. In his second year of junior high school, as the eldest child, he quit school and went to find work.

In the past 10 years he has passed through Shanxi, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen and other places. He has worked in garages, eateries, and on the assembly line in an electronics factory. In his own words, he has always been doing “the lowest level of work in this society”.

“No matter how other people see me, I often look down on myself,” the 29-year-old told China Youth Daily, his eyes darting about evasively as he sat on a wooden stool on a Shenzhen sidewalk.

He had “no concept” of protest marches. That day on Shenzhen’s wide streets, he initially felt a bit awkward. “I couldn’t open my mouth to yell the slogans,” he said. After quite a while listening to others’ chanting, he slowly caught up.

Normally he would be standing alone in a 3-square-metre sentry box. He works as a security guard at a car sales and service centre in Shenzhen, where his main task is to hand out parking permits to visiting vehicle: “Every day, doing the same thing.”

“Tedious” is the word he uses most when assessing his day-to-day existence. He often couldn’t stand hanging around in his 6-person dormitory, and in his spare time would often “wander around the streets aimlessly”. On May 1 this year, he was on one of these walks when he came across a stall recruiting volunteers. He asked whether outsiders [ie. those without official Shenzhen residency status] could register. When the answer came back in the affirmative, he immediately joined.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, he wrapped dumplings for the elderly. On weekends he went to the [Hong Kong] border post, helping maintain order, giving directions to travellers and carrying their luggage. He said participating in these activities gave him a feeling of “pure happiness”, making his life “not so boring”.

Walking the streets of Shenzhen that day in the midst of thousands upon thousands of strangers, gave him a feeling of excitement he had never felt before. Before long he was shouting slogans “more and more enthusiastically”. BOYCOTT JAPANESE GOODS! DOWN WITH THE JAPANESE! RECOVER THE DIAOYU ISLANDS! Now he was roaring with the energy of his entire body. A short while later he summoned up the courage to lead the whole crowd through several rounds of slogans.

The ranks of the crowd grew ever-larger, as more groups converged from different directions on the 6-lane Shennan Avenue. Li moved to the very front of the crowd, raising a giant flag with 30 others whom he’d never met. At each crossroads they sang the national anthem.

He hadn’t sung the national anthem since leaving school. “I had even forgotten the words.” But after a few renditions, this tone-deaf man was completely unleashed, and he sang louder each time.

“I felt my patriotic passions being aroused,” he remembered. In that moment he felt “quite carefree”.

In the period leading up to the protest he had followed news of the Diaoyu issue continuously. There was no TV in his dormitory, and no internet, so he went almost every day to his team leader’s quarters to watch TV. “The more I watched, the more anxious I became.”

Ordinarily, “life seems quite pointless”, he said. “I am nearly 30 years old and unmarried, I have no skills. You could say that I have nothing in this world.” He let out a sigh as he said this, and then fell silent.

Last summer he ended a failed marriage. In his village, divorce is a “very humiliating thing”. When he went home for Spring Festival this year, he barely went outside the house, and on the third day of the new year he returned to Shenzhen. He said he likes this “young, energetic” working city. His phone’s background picture is a photograph of himself in front of a Deng Xiaoping propaganda poster.

On the day of the protests, Shenzhen’s streets made this young man dizzy with excitement. His brain was blank; its only thought was “quickly recovering the Diaoyu Islands”.

“If there is a war, I am willing to be cannon fodder!” he told himself.

The imagined war never came. Instead, there was a mass riot. People charged at a riot van; some booted it with their feet, others climbed onto the roof and started wrenching at its water hose.

Li followed, charging forward. He kicked wildly at the riot van for a while, but could see “no effect at all”, so he picked up a wooden plank about 1 metre long and tried to lever the van’s door open. The heavy vehicle didn’t move. So he wound up and swung the plank wildly at the van’s rear-vision mirror.

With a crash, the mirror lay in pieces.

Li Zhiwei kicks the riot van during anti-Japan riots on Shenzhen on September 16, 2012

In that crazy mob, he never realized what his actions meant. Leaving the plank behind, he rejoined the marchers. Even further from his mind was the CCTV camera above the road, recording his every move. In time, the police would capture his image and publicise it throughout the whole city. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a ferocious expression.

He was unwilling to recount these memories to the journalist. “I am really under a lot of pressure.” As soon as the car-smashing was mentioned, his eyes turned red and he clutched his nose, only holding back tears with the most extreme effort. He unceasingly repeated, “I had never done an illegal thing in my life,” and that his actions were “a moment of impulse”.

In his everyday life, this wandering worker is extremely rarely impulsive. In his sentry post, he has never broken the “no listening to music, no reading books, no using phones” rule. “I didn’t want the boss to think badly of me,” he said.

Over his years away from home, this well-behaved man has always felt “the burden on my shoulders is very heavy”. He sends money home at regular intervals, sometimes a few hundred, sometimes a few thousand, but the situation at home has seen no obvious improvement. The single-story brick-and-tile house remains bare. His younger brother contracted a debilitating spinal inflammation [ankylosing myelitis]. This year, to earn a bit more money, his father left the land to find work in Zhengzhou, and his mother is working in Shenzhen as a waitress in a small restaurant.

In his mother’s eyes Li is “very filial”. When she arrived in Shenzhen her son bought her a pair of sneakers and took her to the beach and the Window to the World theme park. The theme park’s entry price was too expensive, so the mother and son didn’t actually go in. Instead, they took photos outside the front gate.

Few people know, but in his heart of hearts, Li sometimes rues that “living in this world has no meaning”. Speaking via QQ, he told this reporter, “I have wanted to die and donate my organs!”

In his daily work this young man hardly ever receives any acknowledgement. In the auto sales and service centre, he sees himself as “worthless”. Compared to the sales managers who sell cars, “I am not on the same level as a person.” He will even indignantly ask himself, “What good is an old-man security guard?”

His experience of doing volunteer work has become his proudest thing. Once, at the Huanggang border post he helped a visitor from Hong Kong with their luggage. They wanted give him HK$500, an amount he was amazed to see contained in one banknote, but he quickly refused. “I could not take it, if I did, the meaning of volunteering would be lost.”

He told this story to his mother and the volunteer group leader. To this day the volunteer centre workers frequently bring it up to praise him.

But when it comes to the future, Li still feels very uncertain. He longs to get married again; his QQ signature reads, “Always seeking true love! Who knows when I can find my ‘she’?” But as he often hears his colleagues say, in this metropolis of realism, “Chasing girls is always something you do with money.” Every day, in his sentry post, he often sees “40- or 50-year-old men with blossoming young girls in tow.” On his salary of RMB 2,300 a month, he has never dared to look for a partner.

Marching on that broad avenue, it was as if he had no worries at all. As he waved the flag he had bought from the local stationery market, he saw a group of youths flinging glass bottles at a ramen noodle shop. When some police arrived to put a stop to it, the scene was one of total chaos. Li was taken to the police station with the bottle-throwers.

When recording his statement he did not mention he had smashed a car. He returned to his dormitory that evening with a sore throat, his body aching all over, and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. At that point he was unclear as to why he had been taken to the police station for participating in a “patriotic demonstration”.

Only when he saw the police had published his photograph in the newspaper as a wanted man, “a suspect in the destruction of public property”, did he suddenly realize the whole city now knew him as a “criminal element”. He skipped breakfast and went straight to the police station to turn himself in.

In the detention centre he felt like time had stopped. He asked every person who was brought in: “How long until someone in my situation gets out of here? What will I be charged with? How long will I get?” He worries that his life would have a “stain left on it” from this point on.

Before he left home to find work, the 15-year-old Li’s greatest dream was to be a soldier. But because his “family had no connections”, this could not happen.

Later, he went especially to experience People’s Militia training. At the end of the course, all the recruits took rifles to practice shooting. “That feeling was so good, valiant, spirited!” As he sat on his wooden stool recounting this to the reporter, his eyes sparkled in the dim light. In this training course he won an “Outstanding People’s Militia Certificate”. That piece of tissue paper still remains in his room in his home village.

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