Anti-Japan protests in China were encouraged by leaders in Beijing, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said on Thursday, after he filmed demonstrators damaging the US ambassador’s car.
Ai was visiting a friend’s apartment near the US embassy in Beijing — which is close to Japan’s mission — when he heard the protest and began recording, he told AFP.
The internationally acclaimed artist said he was “surprised” to see a group of 50 protesters target US Ambassador Gary Locke’s vehicle, surrounding it and damaging its flag.
Photo: AFP
They pelted it with objects before Chinese police rushed to clear a path for the car to accelerate away from the embassy area.
“I was quite surprised because we all can see the whole demonstration (against Japan) being prepared by officials,” said Ai, who spent 81 days in jail last year as police rounded up dissidents.
Demonstrations against Japan broke out across China over the weekend and on Tuesday, sparked by a row over islands in the East China Sea which Japan administers and calls Senkaku, but China claims and calls the Diaoyu Archipelago (釣魚群島).
Locke told reporters of Tuesday’s incident: “It was all over in a matter of minutes. I never felt any danger.”
But he met Chinese foreign ministry officials to “urge them to do everything possible to protect our personnel”.
“The MFA promised a thorough review and to make any adjustments to procedures and protocols to ensure a similar incident does not occur,” he said.
The US State Department says it has “registered its concern” with Chinese authorities.
Hong Lei (洪磊), spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, described it as an “accidental case.”
“The competent authorities are seriously investigating the case and will handle it in accordance with law,” he told reporters.
Ai warned China’s leaders that they were being “naive” in trying to harness public opinion in a way that he said had not been seen in China since the Cultural Revolution.
The last “real” protests in the country, he said, were the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, which were brutally crushed by Beijing.
“They tried to picture it as being self-organized, but there were so many details that were obviously very carefully prepared,” he said referring to the recent protests and rallies against Japan.
“But to use that kind of tactics in this kind of international discussion seems pretty naive. It is like the 1960s.”
“They are trying to say that this is self-organized, but it is the encouragement of officials. We all know in China that the last real organized demonstration was crushed by tanks.”
Ai also poured scorn on the protesters themselves.” Anybody watching the groups involved ... there are no leaders, no intellectuals,” he said.
“It is the kind of people that no-one can identify with. It is not students. It is not workers. It is not anybody.”
Li Chengpeng, an investigative journalist who is now one of China’s most followed bloggers, also criticized the demonstrators’ motives.
“Some people claim that we should boycott Japan — however difficult this might be — just to prove to the Japanese our position and to frighten them.”
“What type of brainwashing says that buying Japanese goods is an act of treason?” he said, in a posting that had been viewed more than 250,000 times and received almost 20,000 comments by early afternoon.
Li’s blog on Sina Weibo — China’s version of Twitter — has nearly six million followers.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not