Most Japanese carmakers temporarily closed their Chinese factories on the anniversary date of Japan’s pre-war invasion of China.
This follows violent riots across China.
- Toyota suspended some of its car production operations in China. Toyota spokesman Hitoshi Yokoyama said in a text message sent to Reuters that Toyota decided to halt manufacturing and other operations, to “ensure employee safety.”
- Suzuki said it is suspending operations at one of its motorcycle plants in China. Operations at the plant in Jinan, Shandong province, will be halted on Tuesday, Suzuki spokesman Ei Mochizuki told Reuters.
- Mitsubishi Motors said it will halt operations at one of its factories in China, Reuters says. Yamaha Motor Co also said that it will suspend operations at four plants in China on Tuesday.
- Meanwhile, Mazda said it will resume production at its Nanjing factory in China, earlier than initially planned, a spokesman told Reuters today.
- Nissan told Reuters it will resume production tomorrow, Wednesday.
More plant closures had been announced yesterday.
Overall, it currently appears as if matters are cooling down after getting out of hand over the weekend. After having run appeals that “irrational, violent anti-Japanese protests should be avoided,” Government-controlled media rarely report about demonstrations anymore, and “sensitive” search words have been purged from the Weibo microblog platform.
Also according to Reuters, there is a risk the protests ”could get out of hand and backfire on Beijing, which has implied tacit approval to them through state media. One Hong Kong newspaper said some protesters in southern Shenzhen had been detained for calling for democracy and human rights.”
Yesterday’s departure of a giant fleet of 1,000 Chinese fishing boats, en-route to the disputed islands, probably was a half truth. Last weekend, a three month fishing moratorium for the area ended, and fishing boats would have left with and without international attention.
“One Hong Kong newspaper said some protesters in southern Shenzhen had been detained for calling for democracy and human rights.”
That’s the tricky part about being a totalitarian government that’s sponsoring astroturf-style protests — the people will get the idea that protesting real grievances is actually allowed!
“Give them an inch…”
Or, as one of my political science profs said 20+ years ago about another part of the world, “beware the revolution of rising expectations”…once you make the trains run on time, people start looking around and figuring out what else they want out of you.
This is the first time, in a long time, where I see a news photo where the mobs are desecrating a flag which is not an American flag…..well I take that back…the Muslim mobs did burn a German flag last week.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204904/Pakistani-man-dies-inhaling-fumes-burning-American-flag-anti-Islam-film-rally.html?openGraphAuthor=%2Fhome%2Fsearch.html%3Fs%3D%26authornamef%3DPhil%2BVinter
Fortunately, our cheap Chinese flags are toxic when burned now.
Now that is funny!
@CJ:
In the People’s Republic of Minnesota, our (former) elephant governor (what was his name again…? Oh yeah, former US Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty) signed into law before leaving office that all US flags sold in Minnesota MUST be made in the US.
That said, your remark was pretty damned funny. :)
“Most Japanese carmakers temporarily closed their Chinese factories on the anniversary date of Japan’s pre-war invasion of Japan.”
I LOL’d.
It was the quickest and most efficient incursion in recorded history with a stunning zero casualties. Military officials high-fived until they turned the map around…
The problem is how do you know when you’re done, and what’s the exit strategy?
The problem is the buggers are still there and don’t look like they’re about to leave anytime soon. Unfortunately with the advent of the fifth column even the general populous has accepted this fait accompli and has no intentions of throwing off this pernicous yoke.
Now if only we do something with the brutal Scot on Scot debacle we could get somewhere!
Well this is starting to turn into an exceedingly awful situation.
I didn’t harbor any illusions that the Chinese and Japanese were bosom buddies, but this is just plain ugly.
Listening on the radio, one Chinese youth was quoted as saying he’s going to school so he can “build tanks to exterminate Japanese.”
I’d hope extreme views like that were in the minority in China, but I don’t know.
One can only hope the situation can be solved diplomatically, which probably requires an impartial mediator.
The Japanese shouldn’t risk their entire civilization and way of life on a few islands, regardless of the legitimacy of their claim.
But nor can they allow China to believe they’re free to take whatever they want.
Quite the conundrum.
… especially because Japan has no legitimate claim to the islands.
As another B&B had posted in a previous link, these islands were historically Chinese (discovered in the 15th century during the Ming Dynasty, vs. the 19th century for the Japanese claim).
Moreover, according to the postwar treaties signed by Japan, these islands are all supposed to be returned to the Chinese (all lands taken by Japan, except for the the Japanese home islands).
I strongly suspect that PRC Chinese are not quite as extreme as these mobs would have you believe – though the majority of us continue to see Japan’s refusal to do what the Germans did (i.e. acknowledge, confess and repent for the horrific atrocities committed), we don’t want a war.
I’ve also heard that many of these mobs are made up of unemployed and disenfranchised young men. Can you say powderkeg?
Matters may have been lessened had the Japanese apologized for their wartime atrocities the way the Germans did.
I think most asian countries are still waiting to hear from Japan, and all are keeping an eye on them.
Mobs? Unemployed? Disenchanted? In China? You’re kidding, right? They have more factories and employ more people than anyone. I guess you don’t HAVE to work, but I have a hard time believing someone can’t find a job in China!
@Zackman:
Migrant workers still don’t get a fair shake.
They have little to no legal status in the cities.
Believe it or not, even though China has opened up immensely, there are still many who fall through the cracks.
Nationalism is an ugly one. On 9/12, I saw a father and his eight year old standing in the middle of a Seattle suburb (granted, this was trashy Federal Way to give context to this) holding up a sign that read “Kill all Muslims”.
But regarding the islands – the Chinese have got a much better legal case than the Japanese. The peace treaty at the end of the war made Japan give up rights to territories it acquired since around the beginning of the century – including Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. And that includes those islands, which were well-documented to be under Chinese administration previously since the 1500’s.
The thing is, the PRC and the Han Chinese have this weird notion that all lands that had been conquered by the Mongols (Yuan) and the Manchu (Qing) and hence, were a part of their empires (of which China proper was a part) are by that connection naturally a part of “China.”
If the Soviets hadn’t intervened, the rest of Mongolia wouldn’t be an independent nation.
Agreed, Mongolia would have been integrated by China proper similar to Tibet if not for Soviet intervention in the early 1920s.
Why is that weird? Kublai Khan himself proclaimed it to be a Chinese dynasty – the first foreigner to do so. Both him and the Manchurians essentially performed hostile takeovers on the Chinese civilization and both their imperial courts eventually lost most of their ethnic identities and fully adopted Chinese language and customs voluntarily.
After Mongol Yuan dynasty fell, they fled north to modern day Mongolia – which was itself absorbed by the Manchurians by 1700. Modern day Mongolia began as nothing more than a puppet state by the Soviets to fend off against anti-Bolsheviks, rather than some renaissance of Mongolian nationalism. Today, more ethnic Mongolians live in Inner Mongolia than Mongolia proper.
Now wait a minute. When I dared to suggest that one of the reasons that GM and VW are atop the China import pile was because the atrocities of World War II had not been fully forgiven/forgotten in China – the B&B called me an idiot that didn’t get world politics.
So I have to ask – why is it then – since this is in the mind of the B&B that don’t have relatives old enough to have fought in WWII alive anymore (my father was in Patton’s 3rd Army) nor understand in the slightest what happened during that era, that all this is going on in China – I mean it’s ancient history and no one in China cares about this anymore – that’s what the B&B told me.
crunch crunch crunch crunch
Let the feast of a million popcorns begin (so my prediction on who will reply to this first is in code DKJOTE — lets see if I’m right on that one too.
I think the average American with ancestors from this time did not have atrocities committed against them so its difficult for us to relate. The average Chinese or European perhaps grew up with stories about what “they” did to us and holds resentment against products from a particular nation/firm. I can’t speak for the Chinese, but it seems many British citizens in London have forgiven the Germans for killing thousands of their parents/grandparents as evidence by the number of BMWs and Mercedes in their city.
‘Social capital’. People are the same everywhere, but let’s call a spade a spade, the social capital in China is not as developed in other countries. I kept pointing out to family members the monsieur and the frau that were appearing side by side all through last year through a common crisis.
‘That’s different’, they say. Not really, France has been living in various states of dread of German hegemony since, what, the 18th century? How, the capacity of a people to forgive and forget is it’s social capital. China has a long ways to grow up still, not everybody is as ardent, but when you look at whole masses of people, its a far ways off.
The problem is also that the Chinese, and I mean all Chinese all over the world, are still very insular, and only measure themselves against a)How much they hate the Japanese or b)How much they want to exceed white people. If they would look further, my suggestion is that Rwanda has a lot to teach… out of great tragedy, the Rwandans had to let go of their hurt, and perhaps more than any other country, gave us the best concept of ‘truth and reconciliation’ that we know to today.
However it’s very nuanced. In college, I had a hard time purchasing a Honda because it was ‘too Japanese’, despite the fact that it was made in Canada. However, no problem, even a recommendation for buying a Nikon camera, because it was the best. At one point, it seemed that we had become resigned to the fact that the world was largely Japanese made, and the nationalistic bullshit was given a rest, but now that Japan’s place in the world is diminishing, it’s rising again.
This is not to diminish what the Japanese did; they still have a responsibility, but in my lifetime, I have not been at war with them, and the number of Chinese people that they have killed…not much really. The number of Chinese who have died at Chinese hands? Too many to count.
The blitz and the terror weapons of the V1 and V2 (with the V2 being a true terror weapon – there would just be an explosion) is nothing compared to Nazi atrocities committed in the Holocaust. My father was in the first US unit to arrive at Buchenwald. According to my grandparents it changed him forever. And given that he spent the rest of his life self-medicating with whiskey and cigarettes I imagine it did.
The Japanese atrocities in China and Korea are – beyond description. Biological warfare, active vivisection of humans to learn nothing more than the thresholds of pain. Mass organized rape via “comfort women” programs. And then there were the camps for foreign nationals, never mind death marches, slave labor, and working people to death. For the Japanese, surrender was the worst thing you could do, and you were a lower than low life form if you allowed yourself to be captured, or capitulated to rule. It was better in their eyes to die. So surrender or capitulation simply opened you up for horrific non-human treatment. You were in your captors eyes – not human.
For the average Chinese citizen, these issues are not held on to say the way atrocities and wrongs are clinged to in places like the Middle East, where neighbor will kill neighbor as easily for something that happened last week, or something that happened one-thousand years ago. However, the Chinese people still have a bitterness to their Japanese neighbors, certainly more than as you pointed out the English do the Germans, or the United States have to the Japanese.
Another thing that I find very interesting – it appears the average Chinese citizen has more stomach to protest what they feel is wrong, than the average American, and it seems it is easier to protest in China than in United States. Just makes me wonder who are overlords really are (not that I have any desire to live under a Chinese style government – but it points to me how broken American “Democracy” is today)
> Another thing that I find very interesting – it appears the average Chinese citizen has more stomach to protest what they feel is wrong, than the average American, and it seems it is easier to protest in China than in United States
These aren’t your average Chinese citizens. Well, nobody in China is average. You have a group of maybe 150-200 million middle class and then you have many millions more who are migrants from the country;work permits/residency rules means that if you are from the country, you have no permanent claim to living in the city. Like I said last week, the one thing in common with the anti-Islamic video protests and the China uprisings is that they start by throwing a spark into the disaffected class, those with poor economic hopes or who have little control over their destiny. The words “Rodney King” still carry meaning in Los Angeles; I’m sure there are lots of other places haunted by similar memories.
> Another thing that I find very interesting – it appears the average Chinese citizen has more stomach to protest what they feel is wrong, than the average American, and it seems it is easier to protest in China than in United States
These aren’t your average Chinese citizens. Well, nobody in China is average. You have a group of maybe 150-200 million middle class and then you have many millions more who are migrants from the country;work permits/residency rules means that if you are from the country, you have no permanent claim to living in the city. Like I said last week, the one thing in common with the anti-Islamic video protests and the China uprisings is that they start by throwing a spark into the disaffected class, those with poor economic hopes or who have little control over their destiny; everything afterwards is a mob. The words “Rodney King” still carry meaning in Los Angeles; I’m sure there are lots of other places haunted by similar memories.
@stuntmonkey
Great posts, alot to take in.
@APaGttH
As a student of history, and not to diminish the crimes of the Holocaust, I am aware the Japanese found new depths of depravity from the late 1920s to the end of the war. Between their lengthy occupation of Manchukuo beginning in 1931, to the invasion of greater China in 1937, human and bio-weapon experiments in China by Unit 731, to the death marches in Bataan and elsewhere after war started… their inhumane actions will simply numb you if you begin to look into it.
I am reminded of a line from the cartoon, ‘King of the Hill’ where the protagonists’ father, who is a ardent patriot and WWII vet, points at a Mitsubishi SUV and declares something to the effect of ‘Mitsubishi built the Zeros who bombed Pearl Harbor, how could you drive this’ to a passerby. This character is mocked by the passerby and scolded by the protagonist.
I have to agree the average Chinese citizen does have more stomach to protest/boycott, much more than the average American, we as a people have little recollection of the past.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_atrocities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchukuo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_death_march
@28 cars later:
The difference is this: Germany officially and unambiguously apologized for its wartime conduct.
Japan has yet to do so.
I think Apattgh puts the Nazis vs. Imperial Japanese
@Stuntmonkey – HOW the Japanese killed is just as important as how many. If you like, read up on the Rape of Nanking – sources from Western diplomats etc. corroborate the horror that saw up to 300,000 Chinese civilians die in one city, and many more mutilated, raped, tortured, etc.
Read up on that and Unit 731 – if you dare.
I’m in my 30s, and grew up until my teenage years with grandparents and their circle of friends who lived through Nanking and Shanghai. It wasn’t that long ago so it’s certainly not forgotten history on a personal level for a lot of people my age.
It’s probably no coincidence that 2 of my female cousins dated and married Japanese-Americans only after my grandparents have departed.
Heck, lots of Southerners get riled up when you bring up the War of Northern Aggression, and certainly no one’s alive from that era.
Except, as a whole, the Japanese automakers have a bigger share of the Chinese auto market than the American or German automakers.
This is a trial balloon for the Chinese to take Taiwan.
We can all be proud when that happens. After all, our Walmart and auto parts shopping will have bankrolled it.
Economically, that’s a dead end. 2-3 million Taiwanese (about 15% of the total population) currently work in China. There are too many business transactions going on to spark any war or invasions or anything like that anymore.
“There are too many business transactions going on to spark any war or invasions or anything like that anymore.”
The Soviets were trading with the Nazis right up until the day that the Nazis began Operation Barbarossa.
Trade is irrelevant. China wants Taiwan back. Money isn’t an issue; ideology is. When the PRC feels that it can get away with it, it’s going to make its move.
And that move that they make will forever damage the prestige of the United States, because the Chinese will by then have amassed a considerable military force and will wave that in our faces. There won’t be a damn thing that the US can do about it.
At least we’ll have some cheap car tires to show for it. That will be a low price to pay for losing superpower status.
End-all geopolitical conflict is a possible option, one given the quiet Pacific buildup which could be in the cards.
Personally at this juncture I have little faith in the Boomer generation to prosecute a successful war, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
I didn’t vote for Clinton.
Headlines will continue as China disputes all/any archipelagos in the China Sea that aren’t theirs.The US will get involved to: 1. Help an another member of a defense pact. 2. The sitting president is involved in a sex scandal. I got to go Kosovo. At that point Fred Thompson’s line in Top Gun will be quoted: “This will get ugly and people will die.”
Interesting thought PCH, although in this case there is no native population who would resist/protest against the Chinese on television, let alone resist militarily.
Its a PR world, the Chinese have yet to do anything diplomatically or militarily and yet look at the coverage these rocks are getting due to Chinese protests. Taiwan won’t be quite as easy.
Not much about cars here.
I see Japan invaded Manchuria on Sept 19, 1931. Its hard to say that was a pre-war invasion. You must mean, pre-WWII.
I can say, WWII did not start on Dec 7, 1941 as most Americans may think. Maybe it became WWII when Britain and France declared war in 1939. That was long after the shooting started.
The last quote I saw for Chinese dead was 30 million. Up there with the Russians.
I suspect the island dispute is about resource reserves. Hydrocarbons in those waters.