How does an average Chinese migrant worker become a “nationalist” rioter?

Posted: October 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Diaoyu, Global Times, Mouthpieces, PRC News Portals, State media, TV | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

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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A cautionary tale from the Beijing Youth Daily: misfortune of one driver in the Xi’an anti-Japanese protests

Posted: September 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: China-Japan, PRC News Portals, State media | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Scene of the attack on father of two Li Jianli during anti-Japanese protests in Xi’an, September 15, 2012. Mr Li’s wife, Mrs Wang, featured in the story translated below, is seen cradling her husband’s head.

First came the exhortations to “rational patriotism“, accompanied by satisfying news of China’s government’s “strong countermeasures” — how many law–enforcement ships, how many Chinese fishermen heading to Diaoyu, how surprised Noda was at the strength of China’s response, and even a belated appearance by the PLA Navy in the area.

On Monday afternoon the armada of Chinese fishing boats was a lead photo on the PRC’s top five news portals, while arrests for protest misbehaviour were dominant headlines. E.g.:

There were many more such cautionary tales in the wake of last weekend’s violent riots across China (photos, photos & more photos): police getting on Weibo to seek the perpetrators of patriotic smashings, and subsequent well-publicised arrests in Guangzhou and Qingdao and likely elsewhere. (English-language story from today, September 22, is here.)

Yesterday the Beijing Youth Daily published a detailed, vivid and gory account of how Li Jianli, a  Xi’an family man, was left with brain damage just for driving a Toyota Corolla in Xi’an. As the article describes, Li’s wife got out and tried to convince the protesters not to smash the car with a few “good sentences”, including a pledge to never again buy a Japanese car, but this was all to no avail as someone smashed his skull with a D-lock.

Perhaps to avoid demonizing the protesters, or maybe to provide a positive exemplar (after all, what politicised human interest story would be complete without one of those?), the piece concentrates on the intersection of Li Jianli’s tragic tale with that of a protest-planner-turned-saviour, 31-year-old tool peddler Han Pangguang. When Han heard about Japan’s plan to nationalise the Diaoyus he collected several hundred signatures from other sellers in the marketplace and applied to hold a protest. But as soon as he heard that the protests had turned violent, according to the article, he suddenly turned his attention to saving those threatened by the violence.

The injection of Han Chongguang into the story, of course, serves to support the official line that it was not protesters, or anti-Japanese sentiment, that was the problem, but rather, illegal elements who hijacked the protests.

Nonetheless, the piece provides a fascinating first-hand accounts of the chaos of September 15 in Xi’an.

~

On September 15, a Xi’an driver’s misfortune

Beijing Youth Daily, September 20, 2012

By Li Ran

Fifty-one-year-old Xi’an resident Li Jianli was the breadwinner for his family, but now he lies rigid in a hospital neurosurgery ward.

Li Jianli’s left arm and leg have begun to regain partial movement, but the whole of the right side of his body remains limp. He can slowly bend his right leg, but his right arm and hand just flatly refuse to obey orders. His speech faculties have been badly damaged; he can only say simple 1-2 syllable phrases like “thanks” and “hungry”.

Xi’an Central Hospital has made a diagnosis: open craniocerebral injury (heavy).

Luckily, over the past three days in intensive care he has basically returned to consciousness. As soon as he thinks of what happened to him on September 15, his eyes turn red and silent tears begin to flow. His left hand struggles up to wipe them away.

At 3.30pm that day he was smashed on the head with a U-shaped lock, which penetrated the left side of the top of his head, shattering his skull. He fell down, unconscious, and thick blood and cranial matter spilled out onto the ground. Soon, bloody foam was coming out of his mouth.

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