The American Thinker

More on China:

The American Thinker has a piece on Chinese container ships, which could (in theory) be used for an out of the blue attack on Taiwan. As professor Wang Jisi says in the article, "The danger of war truly exists. We are not a paper tiger. We are a real tiger."

The Washington Post has a piece on some structural changes in the Chinese military. The Belmont Club had some good words on topic when I looked there earlier today, but Wretchard's site seems to be down at the moment.

The other China news is the anti-Japanese protests of the weekend. The Financial Times quotes Yan Xuetong, a notable Chinese scholar:

Beijing had been put in an "awkward position" by the anger of young Chinese against Japan, said Yan Xuetong, a professor at Tsinghua University, rejecting claims that the government tacitly supported the demonstrations.

"The Chinese government never looks for people to go to the streets according to their own will," said Professor Yan. "These demonstrations can sometimes be turned into something else."

Japan's response has been to demand an apology, and speak dismissively of the protests. Shinzo Abe, the man most likely to be the next Japanese Prime Minister, had this to say:

Shinzo Abe, the acting secretary-general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, said Sunday that anger at social problems in China, including widening income gaps, are behind the weekend marches.

"Japan is an outlet to vent that anger," Abe said in an appearance on the "Sunday Project" television program. "Since the Tiananmen incident, these kinds of demonstrations were severely restricted, but the authorities tolerated these kinds of anti-Japanese gatherings, and the people themselves used these anti-Japanese marches. Because of the anti-Japanese education there, it's easy to light the fire of these demonstrations and, because of the Internet, it's easy to assemble a lot of people."

While there is doubtless real truth to that, Chinese subjects retain great anger toward the Japanese. Though it was not a frequent topic of conversation while I was in China, when the subject of Japan did come up, the Chinese -- especially my students, still in college and with their history lessons fresh in their minds -- expressed venom. I gather from conversations with my students that the Chinese history of the Second World War goes something like this: evil Japanese came to China, raped the Chinese women, killed their fathers and forced them mothers to smother their babies while hiding; burned the cities; ravaged the landscape; conducted horrible experiments on the people; and then were driven off by the heroic Mao Zedong, who in passing ran out the "bandits" led by Jiang. The existence of a wider war, or America's role in forcing Japan's surrender and the collapse of the Japanese empire, goes almost unmentioned.

Now, a fair amount of the Chinese complaint against Japan is true -- there really were rapings and burnings and killings, as well as horrible experiments. The nationalist element just focuses that wrath and makes it worse.

The Chinese are, of course, aware of their oppression. But they are also divided -- not so much in the sense that there are people who feel one way and people who feel the other, but in the way that the same person feels and believes two different things. The first thing is this: that they are oppressed by the Communists. The second thing is this: that China is the rightful center of all human civilization. Thus, like the young son of an abusive father, they both hate and love their master. It may be, in time, that they will strike him down; but in the meantime, they will fight anyone who raises a fist against him. The Chinese may be counting on a war with Taiwan to hold off their internal divisions for a while.