September 11, 2016
After the South China Sea arbitral award, China’s state-controlled media intensified its attacks on foreign countries and external forces.
Behind this, the article sees a strategy by the Xi Jinping leadership to divert public attention from a slowing economy, diplomatic setbacks, and failures at home by directing popular anger outward.
It also examines how officially tolerated anti-foreign nationalism recalls patterns rooted in the Mao Zedong era and the Cultural Revolution.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The South China Sea
Echoes of the Mao Zedong Era
After the arbitral award, it was China’s state-controlled media that inflamed anti-foreign sentiment.
Behind this, one can glimpse the intention of the Xi Jinping leadership to divert public attention away from domestic problems and direct it toward external enemies.
A reform-minded intellectual in Beijing analyzed the situation as follows.
The domestic economy is slowing, and China’s diplomatic environment is deteriorating.
The leadership is attempting to attribute a succession of policy failures to conspiracies by the United States and other countries seeking to contain China.
In China, demonstrations directed against the Communist Party regime are harshly suppressed.
By contrast, when the target is a foreign country, nationalist demonstrations have sometimes been tolerated or tacitly permitted.
At times, such demonstrations have even been encouraged or mobilized by the authorities.
The anti-French demonstrations that followed the disruption of the Beijing Olympic torch relay in Paris in 2008 are one example.
The anti-Japanese demonstrations that erupted around Japan’s nationalization of the Senkaku Islands in 2012 are another.
In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, China confronted both the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously.
It also found itself in conflict with, or increasingly hostile toward, many of its neighboring countries.
Regarding the diplomatic approach of the Xi Jinping administration, voices have emerged saying that it recalls the era of Mao Zedong.
The values and patterns of thought embedded during the Cultural Revolution did not simply disappear when that period ended.
They penetrated deeply into Chinese society, from the leadership down to ordinary citizens.
The political habit of identifying enemies, directing anger outward, and mobilizing society through confrontation left scars that continue to shape attitudes and behavior.
When domestic problems intensify, external enemies can once again be invoked as a means of redirecting public dissatisfaction.
The South China Sea dispute offers a contemporary example of that mechanism.
Rather than allowing public attention to remain focused on economic difficulties, diplomatic setbacks, or failures of domestic policy, anger can be redirected toward the United States, Japan, the Philippines, and other external actors portrayed as attempting to contain China.
This is why the reaction to the South China Sea arbitral award must be understood not only as a matter of foreign policy.
It also reveals something about the relationship between nationalism, domestic political control, and the unresolved legacy of the Cultural Revolution.
Part Three
Using developments from the summer of 2016, the following section will examine the depth of these lingering scars and the extent to which the values formed during the Cultural Revolution continue to permeate Chinese society.
Honorifics omitted.