A Chinese answer to anti-foreigner hate

Official ties between Japan and China keep fraying, especially after recent incursions by a Chinese aircraft carrier and military plane in Japan’s coastal zones. The incursions are another sign of Beijing’s drive for dominance in East Asia. Yet a closer look at informal ties between the two peoples reveals a less dire picture of rising tensions.

A good example is the outpouring of grief, affection, and remorse among many Chinese after a 10-year-old Japanese national was stabbed Sept. 18. The boy was walking to a school for Japanese children in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a hub for high-tech companies. Police detained a Chinese man at the scene as the alleged assailant.

The killing, coming months after a similar attack on a Japanese family in another city, drew particular attention because of the date. Sept. 18 is the anniversary of imperial Japan’s bombing of a railroad track in northeastern China in 1931 that it then used as an excuse to invade its neighbor.

The anniversary has long been used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to boost anti-Japanese propaganda and stoke hateful nationalism as a tool for party control. In online postings after the boy’s killing – many of them later censored – Chinese citizens blamed the official rhetoric against Japan for the attack, although the assailant’s motive remains unclear.

“We should stop history education that triggers such vengeful thoughts,” one Chinese woman in Shenzhen told the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.

Hundreds of people have visited the entrance of the Japanese school in Shenzhen to lay flowers and leave notes of apology to the boy. In Tokyo last week, dozens of Chinese nationals showed up for a vigil after the killing. The whole incident, stated Yomiuri, “has prompted criticism among Chinese people against their own country.”

One poignant reaction came in a letter apparently written by the boy’s father and circulated briefly online before being censored. It called for no hate between Japan and China. The father vowed to continue his work at a Japanese trading company in Shenzhen as a “bridge” between the two countries, according to Nikkei news. “My only hope is for this type of tragedy to not repeat itself,” he supposedly stated.

After reading the letter, one Chinese internet user wrote, “The high level of civility that this family represents is much higher than that of the government which represents 1.4 billion people.”