Shanghai Turns Down the Volume

It's been three weeks since more than 10,000 people staged massive anti-Japanese protests in the city of Shanghai, throwing rotten tomatoes at the Japanese consulate, breaking windows of Japanese eateries and overturning Japanese-brand vehicles while police did little to stop the violence. So it was a surprise early last week when the local media reported that 42 people had belatedly been detained for allegedly disturbing social order and damaging the city's image. The announcement was quickly followed by an editorial in the local Communist Party mouthpiece Liberation Daily labeling the demonstrations over Japan's perceived unwillingness to atone for its brutal wartime past an "evil plot" meant "to achieve hidden goals"—shorthand often used by the Party to mean antigovernment activity. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau website posted wanted-style pictures of protesters—including of one woman giggling as she hurled a tomato—requesting citizens with any information on the rioters to "contact the police in order to maintain Shanghai's sustaining stable and harmonious environment."

Why get tough so long after the fact? By letting the demonstrations happen at all, Shanghai's leaders appeared to give tacit approval to the anti-Japanese movement.

But Chinese authorities have traditionally been wary of public protests, and they may have been taken aback by the intensity of the protesters' passions. "They never expected so many people to show up," says a top aide to the Shanghai municipal government. "It scared them to see how quickly crowds can form." Another district aide says, "The leaders are nervous. They are doing everything to stop protests from happening again." The strategy worked in 1989, when Shanghai's leaders avoided a fiasco similar to Beijing's Tiananmen Massacre by persuading students to return to their dorms for the sake of the city's stability. This time around, officials in China's financial capital can only hope the crackdown will compel its citizens to get back to business as usual.

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