Comment liberally. Pray for Cindy Sheehan. Share your thoughts on China and anything else; it’s an open thread.

And it’s a hit with the students. From the ever-unlinkable SCMP:

University in Shanghai to offer China’s first course
in homosexual studies

A university in Shanghai is offering China’s first class on homosexuality and gay culture, and several hundred students have applied for the 100 openings, a professor in charge of the course said on Tuesday.

Professor Sun Zhongxin, one of the course’s instructors at prestigious Fudan University, said its introduction resulted from strong interest among undergraduates.

“I used to teach Gender Study for undergraduates and found they were very interested in the topic of homosexuality,” Professor Sun said.

The class is full but “more students are still applying,” Professor Sun said.

The course aims to break down widespread ignorance and prejudice against gays in China, another instructor, Gao Yanning, was quoted as saying by the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

“We will pay more attention on how to have a proper view about homosexuals,” Gao was quoted as saying by the paper. “We will give students an equitable judgment on homosexuals and help eliminate students’ discrimination.”

A secretary at Fudan’s sociology department said Gao could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gays were strongly persecuted after China’s 1949 communist revolution, condemned as products of decadent Western and feudal societies. Puritanical official attitudes have gradually changed since the late 1980s, and in 2001, the China Psychiatric
Association ceased listing homosexuality as a mental illness.

Looser enforcement of laws on homosexual behaviour has allowed small but thriving gay scenes to emerge in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities in the developed east.

Yet, given the disdain shown to homosexuality by traditional Confucian culture, gay men and women in China still tend to hide their sexual orientation.

To me this is great news and long overdue. Let’s hope we see more of this. And please, please, don’t change your minds the way you did over the Vagina Monologues two years ago! And while it’s very welcome, I wish they’d go further and do something about this:

While reports of violence against gays are rare, discrimination by family members and co-workers remains strong and Communist Party officials have ruled out legislation outlawing such unfair treatment.

I know, we have to be patient and give them “space” to grow and learn. Let’s hope that more good news like this helps push them further in the right direction.

I put up a post a few minutes ago and then took it down because someone told me it was potentially misleading. If I find out it’s accurate I’ll re-post with a more detailed explanation. Thanks.

Once again, Japan has apologized for its WWII misdeeds, this time actually using the word “apology” in Koizumi’s written statements. Of course, no one in China will accept this apology because Koizumi hasn’t dropped nuclear bombs on the Yasukuni war shrine. I think most of us agree it’s time to get over this.

On the other hand, it’s hard to sympathize with the Japanese when they allow their rightists to behave like animals, and to distort/revise the history of the war. What they did yesterday was the equivalent of inviting the scorn and hatred of all their WWII victim countries.

Striking a conciliatory note on the 60th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated an apology Monday for “the huge damage and suffering” caused by his nation’s past military aggression and pledged it would never happen again.

But other events here and abroad underscored the extraordinary divisiveness that lingers over Japanese hostilities six decades after the end of World War II. In contrast with the cordial relationships Germany now enjoys in Europe, several of Japan’s former wartime targets in Asia are still charging Tokyo with failing to atone fully for its actions.

As Asia commemorated the 60th anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender, Japan’s leader on Monday tried to salve wounds by apologizing for the damage and pain the nation had inflicted on its neighbors.

Japan’s critics cite a growing movement here to revise history text books to soften Tokyo’s role in the war that killed millions in Asia, including 3 million Japanese. Ruling party politicians here are also in favor of amending the post-war constitution that renounces Japan’s right to possess an official military.

In his speech in front of the emperor today, Koizumi did not use the word “apology.” However, in a written statement issued earlier in the day, he said that “Japan caused huge damage and suffering to many countries, especially the people of Asia, with its colonization and aggression. Humbly accepting this fact of history, we again express our deep remorse and heartfelt apology and offer our condolences to the victims of the war at home and abroad.”

Yasukuni — which also houses a revisionist war museum that celebrates Japan’s military past complete with an enshrined Zero fighter and Hirohito’s sacred sword — drew more than 100,000 visitors today.

Under a blazing summer sun [at Yakusuni], Japanese groups — some clad in old World War II uniforms and waving the war flag — sang old military hymns and recalled the time when Japan was a burgeoning military power. At least 47 elected members of parliament and two of Koizumi’s cabinet members paid their respects. One wispy Japanese student protester who dared enter the crowd was severely beaten by a group of men before being pulled to safety by bystanders and transported to a local hospital.

His face swollen and bloodied, the young man, who declined to give his name, said the attack began when he voiced his opposition to Koizumi’s visits. “I was then beaten up by a bunch of right-wingers who looked like gangsters,” he gasped.

No, we can’t in fairness let Japan off the hook and blame Chinese immaturity for the all the resentment. Unfortunately, the Chinese leave themselves open to that charge when they appear enraged like an angry child, as they did in this spring’s demonstrations. But they do have something to be angry about, and once they realize they need to take a more strategic and less hysterical approach maybe they’ll do something more constructive and make a real difference, I hope so, because what the Japanese rightists did yesterday was sickening and inexcusable, as is the Japanese government’s allowing WWII revisionism to grow.

And yeah, the Chinese are just as guilty and more so of revisionism. But we expect a more developed and educated country like Japan to do better.

What a week. I have lots of guest posts and story suggestions that I promised readers I would get to, and I just can’t do it today. Please be patient. I never received more emails than I have over the past two days and I am trying to deal with it.

Also, starting yesterday I started to get true, vehement, obscene hate mail! I’ve gotten an occasional nasty email from people who don’t see eye to eye with me on China. But today I got some really nasty stuff, all from defenders of a certain female pseudo-pundit. I guess it’s a sign of success, though one I’d be happy to do without.

Also, there wasn’t much out of China today, so apologies for the dearth of China-related posts.I’ll make up for it very soon.

For now, here’s a thread for the weekend.

It’s definitely a winning formula for the CCP — whenever citizens’ lives are at risk from a deadly disease, simply ban the media from reporting on it and maybe it’ll go away. Thank God they learned from SARS. Thank God they’re reforming.

It’s a subject that isn’t going away any time soon – the ongoing animosity between China and Japan. What’s really behind it? An inferiority complex on the part of the Chinese? An outlet the CCP exploits to shift focus away from its corruption and incompetence? This long article looks at these and other potential factors; pardon me if I include a lengthy excerpt.

On a sweltering August morning in the northern outskirts of China’s capital, tour guides lead parties of visitors down a narrow shaft into a cool network of tunnels under the village of Jiaozhuanghu.

A notice at the entrance explains that, beginning in 1943, local Communist guerrillas dug the tunnels to provide sanctuary and conceal their movements in the hit-and-run war against patrolling Japanese troops. A section of the tunnels, restored and enlarged for the visitors, connects firing positions, underground meeting rooms and field kitchens.

At the end of the tour, an outdoor restaurant advertises meals of guerrilla rations billed as “anti-Japanese food.”

It has been 60 years since Japan’s invading army of two million soldiers laid down its arms in China, but Jiaozhuanghu and scores of other well-funded memorials and museums in the country play a part in nurturing widespread resentment over Japanese wartime aggression and atrocities.

This enduring sense of grievance, inflamed by rising nationalism in Japan, remains the biggest obstacle to a stable, long-term relationship between East Asia’s traditional dominant powers.

Despite thriving trade and investment, disputes over Japan’s attitude toward its wartime behavior have this year sent political ties plunging to their lowest point since the two sides established diplomatic relations in 1972. And, as both seek to translate their economic power into international influence, there is potential for more serious friction.

“There will be long-term tension between China and Japan,” said Yan Xuetong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “And, in the short term, the relationship will continue to get worse.”

This trend has surprised many students of Chinese-Japanese relations.

“If you had asked me 15 years ago, I would have said they were working through this,” said Stephen MacKinnon, a historian at Arizona State University. “Part of the problem is this muscular nationalism in China and also in Japan, particularly among the young.”
….

“There is this whole question of who won the war,” said MacKinnon, the historian. “There has been a downplaying of the fact that China did not really win the war, not that they totally discount the role of the U.S. in the Pacific.”

While China has made huge economic strides in recent decades, some analysts believe that a persistent sense of inferiority arising from this conflict explains some of the stridency in popular Chinese attitudes to Japan.

While this alarms some analysts, others believe the importance of economic ties will force both governments to restrain excessive nationalism.

China in 2004 displaced the United States as Japan’s biggest trading partner, according to Japanese government figures, with two-way trade reaching $211 billion. Japan is China’s third-biggest trading partner behind the European Union and the United States.

There are also strong cultural and intellectual ties that could provide a counterweight to political tension. Even Chinese who harbor strong antagonism toward their neighbor can combine this with an enthusiasm for Japanese food, fashion, electronics and cars.

Others argue that some of the popular Chinese outrage over Japan’s conduct is an outlet for pent-up frustration over corruption and repression that people are unable to express. Even so, the growing antagonism has some experts worried about the longer-term outlook for peace and stability in Asia.

“People say another war is impossible, but I don’t know,” MacKinnon said. “We don’t live in a rational world, do we?”

No, we certainly don’t live in a rational world (hold on a second, let me write that down). Just look at our invasion of Iraq, what we lost and what we gained! As to the reasons for today’s blind rage, I think it’s a constellation of reasons that this article hit upon fairly well. A lot of it’s justified rage, a lot of it isn’t. And while the rage itself is understandable, the willingness — often eve
even eagerness — with which they allow it to become such a dominant factor in their lives is troubling to a world waiting hopefully for signs of China’s maturity.

A reader sent me an email with a good suggestion for a post:

One of Taiwan’s popular models, Lin Chi-ling was recently doing a commercial in the mainland; the commercial called for her to be riding a horse which she was but then the horse threw her and she ended up with a broken rib or something like that and so she was hospitalized. Later after a few days in the hospital in China, Taiwan sent a heliocopter over and brought her back. My details on the above may be a little fuzzy but more or less cover the event. You would think that would be end of story.

However, what has recently developed; some Mainland Nationalistic nuts found out that Lin’s mother and father were supporters of Chen Shui-bian (therefore the implication that they are pro-independence). So the Chinese bloggers have been saying what a bad daughter she is; how bad her parents are etc. to be supporting such a “separatist” president; further they are calling for a boycott of all the products she was advertising.

The Taiwan bloggers have answered in kind; more or less defending their “attractive and popular–because she seems to be a sweet girl–model.” The blogs have been firing back and forth but from all I can see they are in Chinese.

It brings back memories of when A-mei a popular singer of Taiwan was banned in China because she sang the national anthem at Chen Shui-bian’s first inauguration.

Cursory research shows the reader is right, and apparently the mainland bulletin boards are eating it up as well. It’s a superb example of a non-issue whipping people up into a frenzy. What motivates the bulletin board busy-buddies to go bonkers like this? Is there any sense of rationality or critical thinking? Are they just a pile of dried timber waiting for a spark to light them into a frenzy?

Just asking….

This most unusual Chinese blogger was making a big stir with her site, which received international attention in recent weeks. Now, the all-knowing Party has suddenly banned her from appearing in the media and decreed she must “disappear.” Just see how she threatened harmony and stability:

Sitting across the table is an unlikely heroine of China’s youth, an icon of the internet age whom the Beijing authorities have just ordered “must be disappeared” from the spotlight.

She is recognised by all the waitresses in our bustling restaurant in Beijing’s university district. Fellow diners whisper and point as Sister Lotus gnaws on roast rabbit legs, muses on her baffling fame and laments her downfall.

This 28-year-old woman of average looks and with no obvious talents has somehow become a phenomenon: idolised, adored and ridiculed in equal measure for her bumptious weblog (“I am so beautiful, when men see my body they get a nosebleed,” reads a typically boastful posting) that are required reading for millions.

Only a few days ago, Sister Lotus was planning a lucrative media career on the back of her internet postings, often illustrated with saucy pictures in over-the-top poses. Now the authorities have decided that the show has gone on long enough. The Sister Lotus phenomenon is history.

“Just like that, it was all over,” she says, unusually deflated. “They blocked me. The Propaganda Department told the television stations and big newspapers to stop covering me. For some reason, they were uncomfortable.”

All the book and recording deals have been canceled and she is left with very little money. Reporters acknowledged they were told by the party she must disappear from the public eye altogether. Thank God; we’re all safe and harmonious again.