Tag: Nationalism

  • Celebrating May Fourth With Slow Internet

    The internet is unusually sluggish today. I wrote a bit about some possible reasons why at Sinobyte. Blogspot has re-disappeared, MSN Messenger is inaccessible from an artsy Beijing cafe, searches for Carrefour are just back from going unanswered, and the spring sky is clear. It’s the 89th anniversary of China’s May Fourth Movement. In 1919,…


  • Selden: How can the U.S. criticize Japanese atrocities?

    Mark Selden, coordinator of Japan Focus, asks: [M]ore than six decades since Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, by what right does an American critically address issues of the Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s wartime atrocities? Stated differently, in the course of those six decades US military forces have repeatedly violated international law and humanitarian ethics,…


  • 'Conquer English to Make China Stronger!'

    Ampontan points out that the media’s love for Li Yang’s instructional rallies and methods, called Crazy English, recently included a New Yorker article by Evan Osnos. I’m pretty happy with myself because with my Mandarin tutor today I finished a textbook. But our meetings at a Beijing cafe are nothing like Crazy English. One by…


  • Top Japanese Officials Not Among Politicians Visiting Yasukuni

    Tis the season for Yasukuni Shrine visits. Between 62 (per Mainichi) and more than 150 (per AP) Japanese lawmakers visited the shrine on the traditional occasion of the spring holiday. But Jun Okumura notes that none of the very top leaders were among them: The AP report does tell you that “Prime Minister Fukuda did…


  • 'China Can Say No' Writer: Japan Less of a Problem Than U.S.

    Danwei today posted an excellent set of material on the 1996 book China Can Say No (中国可以说不). The book was influential in Chinese nationalism and follows a 1989 book by Japanese novelist-turned-governor-of-Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, and a top Sony executive, Morita Akio, called The Japan That Can Say No. The Danwei post includes a recent interview with…