I'm hard, I am

The streets of Chinese cities are no longer full of YouTube comments in human form; it was quiet as a mouse round the Japanese embassy this morning, though a coupe of streets are still closed off.  In a quick e-mail exchange with a US embassy buddy last night he noted that if the protests were allowed to go on today, they would be seriously worried, so this is a good sign for non-crazy decisions in the future.  The prospect of an actual armed conflict seemed very real the last few days; it's still not receded, despite how mindblowingly stupid it would be, because the fishing season's restarted and there's the unhappy prospect of another collision, seizure, or similar.  But the State-backed jingoism has been everywhere; I called my father-in-law and found his ringtone had been replaced - by his phone company - with a "Defend the Diaoyu Islands! The Diaoyu Islands belong to China!" message.

I've been thinking about the protests as a signal.  Japan badly misread the Chinese reaction to nationalizing the islands, which Tokyo saw, at least in part, as a way to forestall Ishihara and the far-right getting their hands on them.  One reason they misread it is because China has exhausted its rhetorical responses from overuse. When every move is "illegal," "an insult," and China is constantly "ready to use force," it becomes very hard for others to judge exactly what is and isn't a real red-line issue.  

There's an interesting chapter in Codes of the Underworld where Diego Gambetta discusses self-harm among criminals and prisoners as a noli me tangere message; hurting yourself to demonstrate your own determination and willingness to take extreme measures if attacked. I think that's one way to look at the protests; Beijing is showing that it's willing to harm itself - through both economic damage and loss of reputation/face - to indicate that it's serious about future steps.

That doesn't necessarily mean force, though it doesn't rule it out; it might point instead to a willingness (or an attempt to get Japan to believe that will exists) to put economic sanctions into effect that would fuck up both the Japanese and Chinese economies.  Given the state of the Chinese economy and the sensitivity of the political timing, I think that's to some extent a bluff, but the protests make it, at the very least, a convincing bluff.

 

Comments

[ajay]

I called my father-in-law and found his ringtone had been replaced - by his phone company - with a "Defend the Diaoyu Islands! The Diaoyu Islands belong to China!" message.

Holy shit. Really?

If so, I give it five years before that comes to the UK. You can pay a bit extra to keep your own ringtone. If not, prepare to find your phone suddenly started to say "Tesco! Every little helps!" in a wee squeaky voice.

[JamesP]

Just to clarify, I'm pretty certain this just played for the *caller,* rather than being the tone that sounded from the phone.

[Alex]

That's a ringback tone, not a ringtone, and it's a network service rather than a handset feature.

It does have a nasty, war-fever, mobilisation plan sound to it. Do you think it was part of a plan, or the operator freelancing/working towards the leader?

[JamesP]

I doubt it was planned; probably just China Mobile or Unicom (the two big providers) going with the swing of things.

[JamesP]

You can set your own ringback tone in China (thanks for the term), but otherwise it defaults to the service provider. Haven't noticed it on Beijing calls; this was Hunan.

[Alex]

CM is a pretty regionalised company - contracts with NSN, Ericsson, etc are usually issued by CM-Wherever rather than head office, and the IP address ranges are permanently broken out by province. So perhaps someone in CM-Hunan is a nutter.

[ajay]

Ah, OK. That's slightly less disturbing. Still not great though.

[Barry Freed]

I called my father-in-law

I seem to have missed the point at which Ms Blood became Mrs Blood. If so, then: Congratulations!

[JamesP]

Hah, not yet, technically. I just call him "Ba" anyway.

[BenSix]

I know being surprised by the priorities of the media is like being shocked by the state of the British weather but it's nonetheless dispiriting how much more attention the Duchess of Cambridge's sunbathing has acquired than this intriguing business.

[john b]

Ben: I'm rather spirited by it, to be honest.

The whole thing is meaningless swordwaving, culminating in the absolutely bonkers piece in the Torygraph this morning about China declaring Bond War on Japan (despite owning 2% of Japan's sovereign debt), with no more real world impact than any other pointless ritual denunciation to appease domestic patriotic stupidity.

Frankly, I'd rather the masses were getting excised by the inappropriate display of Sloaney tits, which at least has no impact whatsoever on real life, than wound up about "NEW WWIII" scaremongering which might affect their views on Abroad & Foreign Policy Choices.

[BenSix]

Fair point. I'd momentarily forgotten that all international events are either completely trivial or harbingers of the apocalypse...