China’s popular nationalism on the internet. Report on the 2005 anti‐Japan network struggles1

Abstract Abstract In April 2005, waves of anti‐Japan protest swept China and South Korea. In China, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in more than 40 cities to protest against Japan over its irresponsible attitude toward the history of colonial rule and war crimes of 60 years ago. Despite the protest having a strong ground and its action being generally non‐violent and peaceful, it was then severely condemned by many Western critics and media as chauvinistic and irrational, and as being manipulated by the Chinese government to legitimize its rule. Against such a notion, this essay attempts to work with China's 'popular nationalism' (renmin minzu zhuyi), and considers its space as an autonomous political domain that is independent of the state nationalism. The 'cyber‐nationalism' (wanglu minzu zhuyi), this paper argues, not only challenges the state monopoly over domestic nationalist discursive production, but also opens up new possibilities for performing common people's 'public discursive right' (gonggong huayu quanli). Far from being a homogeneous unity, the online campaign is characterized by free exchange of information and lively debate over the boycott strategy. Keywords: Chinese cyber‐nationalismanti‐Japan protestdiscursive struggleboycott Japanese products Notes 1. I would like to thank Shunya Yoshimi, Muto Ichiyo, Ubonrat Siriyuvasak, Hao Zhidong and Kuan‐Hsing Chen for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, delivered at the 2005 Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies Conference in Seoul. All errors that remain are my responsibility. 2. Many Chinese websites, which contained protest‐related information, were closed down by the Chinese authorities, with the most popular instant messaging client QQ taking measures to add the word 'march' (youxing) to the list of banned words, preventing its users from sending messages that contained prohibited words (China News Asia 2005 China News Asia. 2005. 'The Chinese Communist authority closes down several big anti‐Japan websites', 22 April (http: //www. cna. tv/stories/itnews/view/28604/1/b5/. html; retrieval date: 25 April 2005) Google Scholar; The Chosun Libo 2005 The Chosun Libo. 2005. 'The Chinese authority issues red signal to avoid the protest on 4 May' 3 May. (http: //chinese. chosun. com/big5/site/data/htmldir/2005/05/03/20050503000025. html; retrieval date: 7 May 2005) Google Scholar). 3. The year 2003 was declared by Chinese 'netizens' (wangmin) as a 'new chapter' of Chinese nationalism, with particular reference to the significant growth of web‐based nationalist protest in that year. The form of these internet protests ranges from a signature campaign to online debate over such Japan‐related issues as the Diaoyu Islands dispute, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Japanese history textbook controversy, the Qiqihar Mustard Gas Incident, the Beijing–Shanghai high‐speed rail link contract, the Zhuhai Prostitution Incident, and the Xibei University Incident. 4. All the quotations here and later are serialized and numbered for the sake of clarity. For this section, the serial number starts from 1 to 23. On the discourse of action, the serial number is from a‐1 to a‐21. The translation from Chinese is entirely mine. 5. For a recent account of China's online public sphere, see Beijing Review (2005 Beijing Review. 2005. Special Issue on China's Online Public Sphere, 25 August (http: //www. bjreview. com. cn/ml-zhong/Index-2005-34-z. htm; retrieval date: 1 September 2005) Google Scholar). 6. This is not to suggest that there were only two streams of opinion on the issue. Here, I refer to the 'polarizing' tendencies on the forum, especially during the last few days of March (when the street protest was about to take shape). On the polarization of online opinion, see Wang (2000 Wang, Xiaodong. 2000. "'The internet and the diversification of Chinese thoughts' ". In BBC BBC Chinese Net 2 May. (http: //news. bbc. co. uk/hi/chinese/chinaₙews/newsid₇42000/7422392. stm; retrieval date: 4 January 2002) Google Scholar).