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No surprise, then, that Japan Inc. is getting nervous. A senior Japanese business leader reportedly met with Koizumi earlier this month to urge him to mend fences with Beijing. Japanese businessmen hope they have convinced Koizumi that, at the very least, he must stop his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine—where convicted war criminals are honored and which is a symbolic center of Japanese right-wing nationalism.
China faces its own risks by allowing hard-won ties to unravel. More than 1 million Chinese work for Japanese companies, and with mainland unemployment worsening, Beijing desperately needs manufacturing jobs to continue multiplying, even if those jobs are created by a political rival. Indeed, an effective boycott of Japanese merchandise would likely imperil more Chinese than Japanese workers. At the Shanghai No. 1 Department Store last week, local clerks complained of lackluster sales of Japanese goods—ironic, given that in one section of the shop's consumer electronics division, every Japanese brand-name product was made in China through joint-venture operations.
But it is the political backlash that could have more serious consequences for Beijing. So far, the government hasn't quelled the majority of anti-Japanese rallies, even though authorities have sweeping power to do so. Political demonstrations are rarely allowed in China, and unsanctioned protests are often put down forcefully. Yet protesters in Shanghai on Saturday easily broke through police lines to attack Japanese targets.
By allowing citizens to vent pent-up frustration on Japan, the government is gambling that demonstrations won't spiral out of control—and turn instead against China's authoritarian regime. Chinese leaders need only look at their own history to see the potential for mayhem. The pivotal May Fourth movement—a blossoming of anti-establishment thought in China—was born on May 4, 1919, out of anti-Japanese protests by students and other citizens angered by the Treaty of Versailles, which ceded German concessions in China to Japan at the end of World War I. "Chinese people may be using anti-Japan protests as a safety valve to express dissatisfaction with domestic issues," says Liu Xiaobiao, a Chinese visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, of the recent demonstrations. "This kind of anti-Japanese protest could change into an anti-government protest."
By late last week, there were signs that Chinese authorities were belatedly clamping down. Police posted messages on popular websites warning against unapproved demonstrations and urging citizens to express their patriotism by working or studying instead. The capital was quiet on Saturday, despite public calls for another march on the Japanese embassy. Whether that calm will last is anyone's guess. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was scheduled to make a diplomatic visit to Beijing on Sunday, in part to try to change China's mind about thwarting his country's U.N. Security Council bid. "Issues like this don't go away," says Emerson Niou, a political-science professor at Duke University. "Audiences in each country expect their government to win, which makes it hard for either country to back down." Meanwhile, another round of anti-Japanese marches is being planned—and it's set for May 4. The latest chapter in Japan's and China's troubled history may only just be starting to unfold.
With reporting by Bu Hua and Bill Powell/Shanghai, Matthew Forney and Nicole Qu/Beijing, Jim Frederick, Jamie Miyazaki and Michiko Toyama/Tokyo
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