Chinese nationalism

Spontaneous expressions of Chinese nationalism in the form of anti-Japanese sentiment actually surfaced in the winter of 1986 in Beijing as university students took to the streets to demand more government accountability about trade policies with Japan. We know how that student movement evolved -- it ended in Tiananmen Square three years later on June 3. Today's anti-Japanese protests are equally symptomatic. Read it here at in French at Le Monde.

These protests are authentic expressions of discontentment, but in no way are they progressive; the demand for justice from the Japanese is terribly displaced.

What the demonstrations demonstrate is that no amount of consumerist pacification will be able to stop these kinds of protest movements. And even if they are not initially progressive, they can serve to become "alternative" spaces where, as in the student movement of the late eighties, greater political maturity evolved and the demands for justice, more transparency and more participatory politics were made explicit during the movement itself, transforming most immediately the geography and libidinal economy of the city of Beijing, albeit briefly. Citizens supported the students occupying the square in material ways with food, water, sleeping bags, amazed by their idealism and their commitment.