CCP: The Chinese Consumerist Party?

In the 1980s, the average Chinese found the money in their pockets growing and saw the emergence of a market for consumer products. Demand for the new 'Big Three’ (a refrigerator, a washing machine and a television set) replaced the practically provincial previous big three, namely a bicycle, a wristwatch and a sewing machine. As Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping put it: to get rich is glorious (致富光荣 zhìfù guāngróng), 

Three decades on, the 'communist' country's administration is simultaneously trying to rein in the culture of hyper-materialism, where girls declare they would "rather cry in the back of a BMW than smile on a bicycle," while trying tempt the Chinese people to stop saving and spend more. 

China is currently trying to make the leap between a manufacturing economy to one led by domestic consumerism. By western standards, the mainland Chinese aren't big spenders, tending to keep a large proportion of funds stashed away. Figures suggest household consumption accounted for 35% of the Chinese economy in 2010, compared to 71% in the US. 

But to those with the means (and some without) designer clothes, fast cars, foreign brands and luxurious holidays are the mark of fashionable modern China. And today's Big Three? Men have to own a car, a house and have a well paying job to even think of finding a wife. 

One driver of consumerism in China is the birth of online shopping. Sites like Taobao, Jingdong, T-Mall, Alibaba have changed the face of Chinese retail. Go to a local market and you'll see how tactile and in-your-face Chinese shoppers can be: they touch everything, they inspect it, they insult it, they bargain over it. While some analysts said the Chinese would never take to online shopping because it doesn't allow them to see and feel what they are buying, the truth is cash is king. 

Bargains galore have drawn millions of Chinese to splash their cash online, and e-commerce has other benefits, too. Many of China's disabled community have taken to running online stores for living as they can face stigma, restrictions and competition in the workplace.  Changes are also spreading to China's remote rural villages, with Taobao recruiting "rural partners" to bring the internet age to the elderly and technologically disadvantaged. Given the growth China's e-commerce platforms have seen, it's incredible to realise there is still much room for growth in the provincial and agricultural areas. In 2010, 1.6 million people worked in e-commerce firms, ballooning to 2.5 million in June 2015. A further 18 million work in related businesses, such as postal services. 

Such huge changes in shopping habits have concomitantly given online retail platforms the power to shape culture: the 11 November is known in China as Singles Day, which has become an online shopping frenzy to eclipse even Black Friday. This holiday was created as a joke less than 25 years ago in campuses in Nanjing because of the appearance of the date (11.11) looking like four solo stick figures and, after all, one is the loneliest number. Yet in 2015, this "joke" led to USD 14.3 billion in online sales thanks to yearly pushes and huge discounts since 2009 led by e-commerce sites such as Alibaba. In 2015, Alibaba drummed up shopping fever with a TV-extravaganza featuring international stars such as Kevin Spacey and Daniel Craig. 

But what does 14.3 billion dollars look like? It's a sum that is difficult for humans to compute, but it is much easier to picture how e-commerce has crept into modern Chinese life. A collection by photographer Huang Qingjun shows families from across China posing next to everything they owned bought on Taobao, each photograph telling a tale of commodity, convenience and character. 

In some ways, online shopping is more advanced in China's urban centres than it is in America and Europe. The innovation driving WeChat is blurring the boundaries of retail, social media and online messaging. If the drive of e-commerce and  hyper-materialism shows no signs of slowing, what does this mean for China as a whole? Website Chinafile asks some pertinent questions of this pursuit of Stuff: 

How much can Chinese consumers afford to spend given the nation’s lack of a social safety net? Moreover, how much consumption can China’s environment handle and is there a magic number that signals China’s people are consuming enough to keep the economy from tanking without simultaneously killing themselves with pollution? 

(Images excluding Mao are from a collection called Totems by Alain Delorme to highlight consumerism in China)

8 Alternative Books on China You Haven't Heard Of

Approach the 'China' section of a bookshop and immediately you are struck by the overall redness of the area. It seems there are no books about China that aren't crimson and adorned with a dragon and/or Chinese flag. Maybe a picture of Mao for good measure. They all have titles like The Dragon Wakes, China Shakes the World or The China Boom. There is no Wild Swans or The Last Emperor here. 

But lets look past "China" to the individuals that make up this vast kingdom; where are the books about current subcultures, trends, phenomenons affecting everyday life? Where are the stories about and by the common people of China: what they like, desire, fear, experience and do to stay afloat in the shifting sands of this rapidly changing country?

I've picked out 8 books; some I have read, some I have been to talks by the author, and some I have listened to reviews on podcasts, and some are just on my reading list. But all cover aspects of life in modern China that economic and international relations books would skim over but are by far the most interesting part of studying China and Chinese (to me at least).

1. Little Emperors and Material Girls: Youth and Sex in Modern China by Jemimah Steinfeld - A look at young people's sex lives, family ties, material desires and strangely enough, patriotism through anecdotal stories and observations.
2. Notes from Beijing Coffeeshop by Jon Geldart - Geldart has spent over five years in Beijing conversing with Chinese business leaders, opinion formers and ordinary Chinese mainly in coffee shops and tea houses. His observations, stories and profiles are a gateway to seeing how people are really do business and living in the new China.
3. Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China by Leslie T. Chang - Through the lives of two young women, Chang vividly portrays the struggles of millions of migrant workers who leave their rural towns to find jobs in the cities, driving China’s economic boom. 
4. I Am China by Xiaolu Guo - Guo is a director and author censored and monitored in her homeland for her more subversive works, and I Am China is no different, telling the fictional tale of two lovers, separated by distance and an oppressive political regime, desperate to find their way back to each other. 
5. Verse Going Viral: China's New Media Scenes by Heather Inwood - Verse Going Viral examines what happens when poetry, a central pillar of traditional Chinese culture, encounters an era of digital media and unabashed consumerism in the early twenty-first century. 
6. Buying Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery in China by Hua Wen - Hua explores how turbulent economic, sociocultural, and political changes in China since the 1980s have produced immense anxiety that is experienced both mentally and corporeally. Cosmetic surgery in China has grown rapidly in recent years of dramatic social transition. Facing fierce competition in all spheres of daily life, more and more women consider cosmetic surgery as an investment to gain "beauty capital" to increase opportunities for social and career success. 
7. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos - Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that unfold on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. 
8. Modern China: All That Matters by Jonathan Clements - I know I said I was going for personal stories, but Modern China: All That Matters covers key issues of national reconstruction that shape Chinese people; the Cold War, the Cultural Revolution, and the dizzying spectacle of China's economic reform. Clements offers a Chinese perspective on such events as the Handover of Hong Kong, and chronicles the historical events that continue to resonate today in Chinese politics, economics, culture and quality of life.

If you have any more recommendations, please comment below!

The Land of Milk and Money 牛奶和金钱之乡

Apologies for the hiatus! During the blogging interlude, I have decided on the topic of my dissertation; milk in China! Those of you who know me well, know that I dislike milk and I have a little bit of a sulk every time a coffee shop charges me extra for ordering a latte with soy milk. But I've found the topic of the growing milk industry in China fascinating; it sums up China's increasing interaction with the world as well as its own growing pains. It is an industry peppered with incidents and scandals, that is, in turn, sharpening the awareness of the Chinese consumer. 

I have just written an article for Qingdao magazine about the issue, as well as a fun 'infographic' for extra facts about the milk industry (click here for the June issue, my article and infographic is on pages 6-9). Alternatively, read below for the unedited article (last paragraph was perhaps too subversive to be published in the mainland). 

Ai Weiwei's map of China, made with over 1000 cans of foreign infant formula

For most part of recorded history, the Chinese relationship with milk can be summarized by the word ‘avoidance’. The History of the Former Han Dynasty, written in 82 AD, tells of the Han princess Liu Jian sent to marry the king of the Wusun tribe. Her poem laments the changes in her lifestyle and longs to return home.

吾家嫁我兮天一方，遠托異國兮烏孫王。

穹廬為室兮旃為牆，以肉為食兮酪為漿。

居常土思兮心內傷，願為黃鵠兮歸故鄉。

My family married me off, to somewhere under the sky.

I moved to far away foreign lands, to the King of the Wusun.

I have a yurt as a room, cloth as my walls.

I have raw meat as food, curled milk as broth.

I often think of my native land, how my heart aches.

I would that I were a yellow swan, to fly back to my home.

The yurt and cloth walls are at odds the Han way of life. Similarly Liu Jian’s poem presents curled milk as antithetical to the typical ‘Han’ diet, where soybeans provided an alternative. Farming cows and drinking milk was seen as barbaric, as the sustenance of nomads. And so, this attitude continued for centuries. 

Only within the past 40 years or so have attitudes begun to change in the wake of globalisation. Milk and dairy began to creep onto breakfast tables and into fridges. Even the founder and chairman of milk behemoth China Modern Dairy, Deng Jiuqiang, admits that, “China has a short history of dairy.” Back in 2006 Premier Wen Jiabao stated, “I have a dream, that every Chinese, especially children, could have 500grams of dairy products every day.”  While Wen's dream might not have been as profound as Martin Luther-King's, his ‘500g Dairy Declaration’ has taken hold. The elder generations may prefer to stick to tofu, but there is no escaping dairy in modern China. Anyone who has been to a Chinese supermarket has heard the furor surrounding the milk aisle, as shop assistants brandish their tubes of yoghurt at you like lactic swords. 

Dairy has swept China. And it is still a growing market, worth $32billion and counting. The average Chinese consumes 2.5 gallons of milk per year, less than a third of the average Japanese or South Korean. Forecasts predict the demand for dairy will continue to grow as urban populations swell and incomes increase. 

However, meeting the demand has proved to be an issue for China’s domestic milk producers. In 2008 the milk supply was not enough to meet the market’s demands. Preoccupied with inflation, the government forced milk producers to maintain artificially low prices. To balance overheads, milk was diluted with water and melamine powder was added to raise the protein content. As a result of the melamine, 6 babies were killed and a further 300,000 hospitalised with kidney problems.

While the melamine scandal of 2008 received widespread international and domestic condemnation, it is not the only scandal to have hit Chinese dairy industry in recent years. The Fuyang Milk Powder Incident in 2004 and the Sanlu Milk Powder Incident in 2008 both caused significant dips in the formula milk market. The Chinese dairy companies Mengniu and Ava Dairy have recalled baby milk powder over fears of high amounts of aflatoxin. Last June, Yili Group, issued a recall after its infant formula was found to contain "unusually high" levels of mercury. These incidents have severely affected consumer confidence in homegrown brands.

In response to the melamine scandal, the government quickly implemented measures to help ensure the safety of domestic milk. Small farms were shut down in favour of group facilities and large farms, where produce can be inspected and monitored more easily. The government even meted out the death penalty to those guilty of manufacturing toxic protein powder.  

Yet the reputation of domestic dairy brands still suffers. Chinese consumers, desperate to purchase safe milk for their children, are turning to imported foreign brands in the hope of ensuring product quality. Foreign brands of infant formula sold on Taobao can fetch over double their original retail price. Evidently, milk powder has become a lucrative market for those with the right foreign connections. This has lead to Hong Kong, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia imposing restrictions on infant formula as a means to stop mainland Chinese from bulk buying. 

Optimistic Chinese companies are confident that it will not be long before the demand for milk can be met by domestic producers. In 2011 China spent $250million on importing shiploads of cattle from Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay. Thousands of tonnes of bovine semen were also bought from America. The hope is to scientifically breed a more productive herd, as a Chinese heifer produces less than half the milk of its American cousins.   

If the Chinese dairy industry wants to overcome the suspicion surrounding its quality, it will have to wean itself off the produce from small farms rather than mudslinging at its foreign competitors. Building a large scale, accountable industry will take time, as will casting off the shadow of various scandals. As for the Chinese people, crying over spilt milk does have a purpose. The voice of the Chinese people crying out in complaint is the strongest method to ensure their food safe is for consumption.

March 15th World Consumer Rights Day 消费者权益日

It's clear why World Consumer Rights Day is such big news in China; the lack of protection consumers face everyday when buying groceries, fast food, cars, in fact, anything at all, means 3.15 is a time to make a stand. Statistics released in 2010 by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) revealed 94,000 cases of substandard food production and 110,000 cases of fake and shoddy product sales, as well as thousands of other misconducts. Thankfully, these chronic breaches of consumers' basic rights can no longer be stifled. The Chinese are becoming ever more aware of their rights as consumers, correspondingly, the channels through which consumers can voice their complaints has also increased. Currently there are 339 centres spread across China handling complaints, receiving 5.21 million consumer queries in 2010 alone, alongside 22 provincial offices researching different methods of protecting consumer rights.

The Chinese melamine milk scandal of 2008

Moreover, the internet as a platform to voice dissent and dissatisfaction is proving impossible to gag. According to Reuters, Weibo, exploded with the hashtag '3.15' in the week leading up to this year's World Consumer Rights Day, appearing over 1.5 million times. On the day itself, a hugely popular state television news show, also called 3.15, publicly names and shames companies guilty of infringing consumer interests. Once aired, the Chinese take to the blogosphere to vent their wrath. In 2012, after MacDonalds was hit with accusations of improper food safety practices they saw their shares fall amid a storm of online anger. Alongside MacDonalds, the French hyper-market chain Carrefour also met with criticism over food safety. 

Exposing unscrupulous businesses makes good TV

As a result of World Consumer Rights Day, companies behave much like teachers when OFSTED are visiting, leading to "a spike in corporate good behaviour... aimed at balancing any negative press." As the Chinese are justifiably concerned about food safety, any challenge to a company's reputation or brand can cause irreparable damage to consumer trust. For example this year, just days after World Consumer Rights Day, MacDonalds gave away over a million McMuffins in a promotion unconnected with 3.15, according to Vivian Zhang (senior director of communications at MacDonalds China).  

Here's a translation of a Chinese article about World Consumer Rights Day:

快捷酒店将洗脸毛巾擦完马桶擦刷牙杯，浴巾当拖把拖地，杯子翻个面就可以了（现代金报3月13日）；超市将过期食品换包装再卖，霉烂水果切拼盘，重量作假价格虚高（广州日报3月13日）；足浴头顶中医科学院光环，骗游客4.8万元（中国经济网3月13日）……形形色色的侵犯消费者权益事件，似乎在“3·15”消费者权益保护日来临之际集中爆发了。

Hostels use facecloths to wipe toilet bowls and toothbrush holders, bath towels are used to mop the floor, cups simply turned upside down are acceptable for re-use (Xiandaijin Newspaper 13/3); supermarkets repackage out-of-date foodstuffs to re-sell, mouldy fruit used in fruit platters, the weight of items faked to increase the price (Guangzhou Daily 13/3); foot massages claiming to have the benefits of Chinese medicine, cheating tourists out of 48,000RMB (China Economics Website 13/3). It seems that leading up to 3.15 World Consumer Rights Day we focus on the eruption of cases of all kinds of consumer rights' violations. 

眼看又到了“3·15”消费者权益日，媒体对一些损害消费者权益的揭露多了，关于保护消费者权益的声音也多了。各地也开始每年一次的例行公事，大力宣传消费者权益保护的重要性，条幅挂上了，宣传车、宣传展板走上街头了。与此同时，网络上的“删帖”生意也迎来了一个旺季。在高声大喊“保护消费者权益”的浮华喧嚣下，一些真正的东西却被潜藏。 

Very soon it will once again be 3.15 World Consumer Rights Day; culprits of harming consumer rights are unmasked by the media in their droves, and a lot of noise is made about protecting consumer rights. Routine annual events spring up everywhere, vigorously proclaiming the importance of protecting consumer rights, banners are hung up, cars are sent out, propaganda placards parade the streets. At the same time, over on the internet, 'shan tie'* businesses welcome in their peak season. Under the ostentatious clamouring for the "protection of consumer rights", a few genuine problems are being hidden and concealed.  

*'Shan tie' 删帖 has the literal meaning to 'delete a notice' or 'remove a notice', and refers to the practice of employing people (presumably hackers) to remove posts or shut down sites revealing problems with a company's product. 

Consumer rights are of huge importance to a people who feel robbed of free choice. It's a sorry state of affairs for the Chinese who cannot freely eat food, drink water, and due the heavy pollution, even breathe without some potential risk to their health. Is World Consumer Rights Day just a band-aid solution to a much deeper epidemic of malpractice in Chinese business? How much can one day of exposure really fix the entrenched bad habits of companies? 24 hours isn't enough time to unearth all the culprits, but hopefully the increased awareness of consumers rights combined with the new systems for reporting offending products will set China along a path improving corporate responsibility and consumer trust. 

Don't mention the War 别谈到日本

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is a considerable amount of unresolved tension between Japan and China. Anyone who has visited chinaSMACK can testify to the vitriol that a minority of Chinese netizens can spew regarding anything Japanese. Under the anonymity of the internet, many people feel able to speak more loosely. However, 反日 (fanri, or anti-Japan) is an accepted and unchallenged topic of conversation. Last year, I stayed with a perfectly hospitable, friendly and normal family over the Summer holidays, but even on the first day, the daughter said to me offhandedly and casually that she hates the Japanese. My current landlord told me he would never rent any property of his to a Japanese. Recently, I had a disagreement with a teacher, let's call him Mr. Zhang, that really appalled me. 

I hadn't prepared all of the text, so I thought I could delay him a little, and seeing as he was looking at the map of China on the wall, I asked why China laid claim to the entire ocean below it right up to the shores of Malaysia. He somehow moved the topic onto the Japanese and spent the next hour ranting. And not the regular 'I don't like the Japanese' rants. He said he would never teach a Japanese person, because 'I teach students, not pigs or dogs', which he said in both English and Chinese. At first we treated it like a normal lesson. We've had other classes with other teachers where we've had discussions on the Diaoyu Islands that were perfectly reasonable, so we offered up other points of view, but remained neutral over the issue. Every time we tried to debate a point he would shout us down saying we were '没有道理' (being unreasonable or illogical), or deceived by the Japanese (through our university education!!), or that we didn't understand China. Another student eventually walked out, while I sat in silence. 

The next day, we went to the office and asked to switch teachers, not because he disliked the Japanese, but because as a teacher wasn't able to distance himself from the topic. He had upset too many of us to able to continue learning comfortably from him. We were then visited by the head of department and another teacher, who tried to convince us 

1. We didn't understand what he was saying
2. We misinterpreted what he was saying
3. It was our fault, for raising the topic of the Diaoyu Islands and for not understanding Mr. Zhang's temperament. 
4. Mr. Zhang can't be racist because the majority of people think this way

Firstly, I understood quite clearly what he was saying, especially as he repeated himself and he stood up to write words like 'deceptive' on the board. Secondly, calling people 'dogs' or 'pigs' is a common insult in China, and in those cases it is metaphorical (I hope), but saying 'I teach students, not pigs or dogs' denotes that this was not a metaphor. I would concede the third point had I actually raised the topic of the Diaoyu Islands. I'm not even going to go into the fourth point. AAARRRGHH. 

At this point, I feel the need to defend myself, as I understand that many Chinese have lasting personal reasons to feel embittered towards the Japanese. My mother's family were also directly affected by the Imperial Japanese expansion during the Second World War and before. Chinese resentment toward the Japanese mainly springs from their actions during this era. But personal grievance and violent Nationalism shouldn't have to be linked.

James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World, sees Chinese Nationalism as a child of the CCP that it is no longer able to control. From the mid-1990s the Chinese government altered its education system to what the Japanese see as an instigation of “drives to drum up patriotism”, reinforcing Japan as the enemy. As a result the anti-Japanese riots of 2005 became more than the government could control. They were unable to stop the crowds attacking Japanese property and embassies for fear that they would face a backlash for being pro-Japanese, which immediately equates to anti-Chinese. Consequently, the people of Japan saw “images of [Chinese] policemen standing by while demonstrators hurled stones at Japanese diplomatic offices”.

This is very much a shadow of what the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls the History Issue, which the media and education on both sides does not appear to be soothing. Chinese sentiment revolves around the lack of war reparations, a lack of a sufficient apology and Japanese aggression, especially over incidents like Nanjing. A CCP writer acknowledged that Japanese aid, grants and loans are “virtually non-existent” in China’s media, and newspapers deliberately tap into anti-Japanese feelings in order to improve their sales. The effects of the education which hones in on the Japanese atrocities of war has bred a youth which when asked what they associate with Japan, 83.9% respond “the Nanking Massacre”. Faced with such strong feelings from what is dubbed ‘the restless youth’, would the CCP leadership be allowed to back down in a crisis with Japan? Would it be pressured to continue by the will of the almost dangerously patriotic nation that it had a hand in making?

Likewise, the Japanese education system has been accused of neglecting or distorting the events of World War II, a cause of much aggravation in South Korea and China. Tokyo maintains that there was only textbook in question, and it was created by an independent publisher, and was only picked up by 0.1% of Japanese middle schools. In response to the outrage in China and South Korea, joint historical research groups were proposed, but the damage from the textbooks was already too deep. The textbooks combined with Prime Minister Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits sparked anti-Japanese demonstrations and hackers on the Prime Ministers site.

China saw Japan as glorifying its Second World War acts. Whether or not this is true, there is simply not the emphasis on the atrocities committed as there is in China, or South Korea, and as such some Japanese do not have the same understanding of events. Hence, Japan is frustrated by Chinese references to the past. The Chinese calls for an apology causes dismay in Tokyo, when they feel that they have apologised explicitly and repeatedly from 1972; “in the Japan-China joint communiqué of September 1972, in the 1978 treaty, and in the Japan-China joint declaration of 1998” and in numerous political speeches. However, after some such apologies, visits would be made to the Yasukuni shrine, where a number of Class A war criminal's names are listed. In visiting the shrine, it is felt that the Japanese honour the atrocities committed and their apologies are thus invalidated.

Such a gulf of misunderstanding between these two populations, perpetuated by their narratives of history and constant media portrayal of one another, takes a long time to heal. In the case of Mr. Zhang, Japan is difficult topic for him, one which time has not changed, a Chinese friend used the word 老顽固 (old and stubborn) to describe him. Understandably, this topic is particularly sensitive for the older generations, the ones who experienced occupation first-hand. So when Mr. Zhang said that we didn't understand China, he had a point. There is a difference between studying China's history in a formal, detached setting, from understanding the pain of humiliation, invasion and occupation. This pain and anger lives on in China's restless youth. 

I titled this post after the famous quotation from Fawlty Towers, but I mean it sincerely and with sadness, because unlike in Europe, the War is not forgiven, and is an ongoing issue in the form of the Diaoyu Islands. Raise the topic of the Japanese and the War, and you may find a can of worms that might be best left closed. Having said that, China is such a vast and populous country; among its citizens are those who are pertinacious in their prejudice, and on the other end of the spectrum, those who enjoy Japanese music, language and popular culture. 

Split personality rocks: Diaoyu vs Senkaku

I realise that to some, this title may sound like a review of Street Fighter and psychological disorders. Well it's not. Currently it's one of the biggest stories in Chinese media, and raising the issue with a Chinese or Japanese person may hit a nerve.

The Diaoyu (Chinese name) or Senkaku (Japanese name) Islands sit in disputed waters and are claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan. The recent spat of violent protests over the Islands was the culmination of a tense year,  brought about by a patriotic Japanese citizen planting the Japanese flag on the Islands on the 18th of August. This is one of a number of points of particular tension to Japan and China. While not mentioned on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs site, their Chinese counterpart has labelled seven so called “Sensitive Issues”. These sore spots for the Chinese are currently listed as the issues of History, Taiwan, the Diaoyu Islands, Japanese-American Security Co-operation, War reparations, Japanese chemical weapons discarded in China and Guanghualiao*.

While on the surface these 'islands' are little more than uninhabited rocks, the seabed on which they sit may be the site of rich natural resources. At the same time as fighting for the potential resources, it is also a bigger battle ground for pride and nationalism, from which neither side looks willing to step down. A former Prime Minister of Japan, Hatoyama, pledged a further $7 million to strengthen its footing on the small island of Okinotori, which China argues cannot be part of Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone. For the Chinese, and South Koreans, Japanese ownership of the territory would impede their “fleet’s freedom of navigation along some key routes”. Yet these rocks have national prestige embedded within them, and the increased activity of both countries’ navies around such areas leads to an increase in tension and a higher possibility of military accidents.

What is evident in the region is China’s much more active navy, that has popped up near Guam, in Japanese waters and near American aircraft carriers. Despite apologising for their “error”, these are most likely displays of Chinese naval capabilities. Yet why would a country that claims to only have an army for internal security need a navy? This question has unnerved officials in Tokyo, and there are considerations to amend their post war constitution to allow for a Japanese force instead of solely relying on the USA. While the Chinese navy might be a form of its acceptance as a world superpower by taking to the stage at sea, it also has people ominously considering the navy preparation for its designs on disputed territories, like the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. 

The Chinese state that their “sovereignty over these islands is fully proven by history and is legally well-founded”, as the Chinese were the first to document the existence of the Islands. Whereas the Japanese state “[the islands] showed no trace of having been under the control of China… [the] Senkaku Islands have continuously remained as an integral part of the Nansei Shoto Islands which are the territory of Japan”. I read an interesting blog on the NY Times, researching the Japanese National Archive's Diplomatic Records Office for documents regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands (read here). It essentially concluded that the Islands were seized by Japan in 1895 as 'war booty', while the Japanese say they legally own the Islands under the Japan-US Security Defence Treaty. The Japanese Prime Minister further inflamed Chinese nationalists by proposing to 'purchase' the islands. 

As of yet, there has been no detente over the issue, but at least the protests that erupted all over China have discontinued. Japanese property and embassies were stoned, Japanese products were (and in many places, still are) boycotted, and in one extreme case, the Chinese owner of a Japanese car was viciously struck by a brick to the head in a frenzy of anti-Japan feeling. Fortunately, other members of the crowd thought this was too much, and he was eventually given help, although he remains in a coma from the attack.

Both sides seem unable to back down, each sending vessels into the disputed waters in a 'to-me-to-you' fashion. As this persists, there will be no visible end to the discord. 

*An issue based around a youth hostel that was located in Kyoto, and in 1950 it was purchased by the Taiwanese, the debate circles around whether the property it  belongs to China or Taiwan, as China states that it is not just a lawsuit but about the legal rights of the Chinese government.