Zhongnanhai

A huge hat-tip to Danwei for this article on a controversy in Salt Lake City. As I was reading through it, I couldn't believe this wasn't a satire of some kind. There are so many angles to this story.

The premise is this: Real Salt Lake hosted China in a football friendly at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Considering the game was in the United States, it could be expected that the fans cheered for the home team, and they didn't disappoint. That wasn't the problem -- the problem was the taunts given to the Chinese side. Did they hurl racial epithets? Make faces with squinty eyes? No. Their crime was to wave the flags of Tibet and Taiwan.

Coker said he and several others, including five Tibetan men, were escorted out of the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium by about 10 officials, including stadium personnel and Real Salt Lake representatives, because they had been waving Tibetan flags and had refused to put them away when the officials told them to do so.

The controversy began shortly after halftime, when Chinese players complained about fans displaying Taiwanese and Tibetan flags and a sign that said "6-4," written in Chinese. That sign referred to June 4, 1989, the date of the Chinese government's attack on protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Members of the Chinese National Team stepped off the field and refused to continue playing unless the flags were put away.

Now, clearly waving the Tibet and Taiwan flags would not be appreciated by the Chinese players. Although I'm sure chants of Osama in Mexico City a few years ago didn't impress the American side, either. Unlike Tibet and Taiwan, 9/11 happened only a few years ago and left a deep scar on the American psyche.  It has directly lead to two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of Americans are dying overseas. Many people lost loved ones in Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York that day.  I would argue most Americans have been personally touched by 9/11 in some way, whether they lost someone in the attacks, lost a family member or friend in the wars, or has seen someone head off to Iraq or Afghanistan. As such, I would argue that the wounds from 9/11 go much deeper to today's generation of Americans than the plight of Tibet does to today's generation of Chinese.

Despite this, fans in Mexico city chanted "Osama! Osama!" to throw off the American players and score political points. One American player summed up his experience in the game this way.

"Since Mexico won convincingly, every fan walked out cheering," U.S. goalkeeper D.J. Countess said Wednesday after training. "I've been hit with bags of urine, limes and batteries. There even was a dead chicken thrown on the field next to me in El Salvador, but since Mexico got the result they wanted, there wasn't much of that.

"I'm sure if we would have won the game, there would have been a lot of stuff thrown at us and a lot of chants."

Dead chickens? Being pelted with batteries? The Americans played through it regardless, even though there were threats against their personal safety. The Chinese can't bear seeing a flag they consider offensive. Draw your own conclusions.

Sports is about having fun, and generally shouldn't be political. That being said, fans will be fans. I'm a big Vancouver Canucks fan, and their playoff drive this spring saw them go through the Dallas Stars and struggling goaltender Marty Turco. Game in and game out, fans chanted "Turco Sucks!" I couldn't image how hearing 18,000 fans, chanting in unison that you suck, could make a player feel. Nonetheless, he played his heart out, was terrific, and was arguably Dallas' best player in the series. In other words, he was mature about it.

I don't totally object to taking things to a political level either, as long as it's done with respect. No burning flags, no burning effigies, no racial epithets. Waving a Tibet flag, while it carries inferences of "Tibetan Independence" does not necessarily mean so. It's a fairly benign way to make a point. Likewise with Taiwan, which has a flag that is flown in Olympic ceremonies and in places all over the world. Perhaps references to 6-4 were a little over the top, but I still err on the side of free speech. At the end of the day, the game was in America, and if you can't make political points there without fear of repercussion, where can you?

I can understand why the government and players objected to having these banners and flags flown while they played. Just like I understand why goalkeeper D.J. Countess didn't like being pelted with batteries, or why Marty Turco didn't like being told repeatedly he sucked. But I can't help but think that this is life, and this is sports -- grow up, and get over it. I'm still waiting for an official Chinese government spokesperson to say that the flags "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people", a phrase that turns supposedly thinking, mature adults into defenseless children. It's a sorry state of affairs when the world's apparent future superpower won't even play football because it's offended by some piddly flags.

Regardless of the political implications, many fans admitted they were just trying to throw the team off.

Fitzgerald said the fans who were ejected weren't really interested in protesting China's politics and instead just wanted to harass and disrupt the Chinese team. He said other fans have frequently complained about those particular fans' use of profanity and sexually explicit language and props during previous games.

Again, trying to distract the opposition is perfectly normal. Just watch an opposing player try and throw a free throw in the NBA.

Despite Fitzgerald's reasons for being there, others were definitely trying to make a political point, and feel their rights were infringed upon -- and rightly so.

Coker admits that he displayed the flag partly to distract and annoy the visiting team, but he said it was mostly a "form of expression about the plight of the people of Tibet."

"I'm going to be contacting the ACLU, and I'm going to pursue it," he said. "I want to hold people accountable if they broke the law, because I know I didn't."

Ironically, the flags flown by Tibetans, Taiwanese, and other concerned Americans was nearly a direct result of China's control of information within the P.R.C. When people can't make these points directly to the Chinese government, they spill out in sporting events and other activities. If China was to allow free debate and discussion on things like Tibet and Taiwan, or engage with those critical of it, perhaps there would be no need to use this kind of an event to score political points. I highly doubt people would be carrying banners saying "6-4" if the Chinese government had already given a full vetting of the event.

At some point the Chinese government and people will have to come to terms with its sometimes brutal and controversial past.  The longer things like June 4th are ignored, the more they will crop up in events like this.  Keeping the people shielded from opinions and events that might be uncomfortable may work inside the P.R.C. for the time being, but it will spill out in other places, like this week's football match. And it's going to spill out a lot more frequently in the years to come.

This also boils down to the players, management, and owners of China's football team.  Were they really so offended that they couldn't play?  Was seeing a Tibetan flag so offensive and utterly disgusting that they were prepared to walk off the field?  Is this the mindset of the Chinese people?  And if so, the rest of the world is scared about what, exactly? 

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Notes:

• Video from the game, including shots of the forbidden flags, can be found here.
  
• A fan, who was at the game and waved an ROC flag, blogged about his experience getting kicked out of the stadium here.
  

Now, it's one thing if the hated Japanese and their former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi make visits to the infamous Yasukuni Shrine.  The disgust with the Japanese runs deep here, and Koizumi's decision to attend the shrine each year he was in office just confirmed Chinese beliefs that Japan, and its ruling Liberal Democratic Party, had not "come to terms with history."

But now this... former Taiwan President Lee Tung-hui plans to visit the shrine to pay respects to Japan's war dead.  Why, you ask?  According to an article in the Taipei Times, he will be honoring his brother. 

Former president Lee Teng-hui yesterday said he would like to visit the Yasukuni shrine, a controversial memorial to war dead where his elder brother is enshrined.

Lee's elder brother served in the Japanese navy and died while on duty in February 1945 in the Philippines.

"I have not yet decided on the timing, but since I am here, I think that I should go see my brother," Lee told reporters on his arrival at Narita airport near Tokyo.

"I will meet my brother for the first time in 60 years," Lee said.

Lee, accompanied by his wife Tseng Wen-hui, left for Japan yesterday for a 10-day visit.

Speaking to Japanese reporters on the flight from Taipei, the 84-year-old former leader said he wanted to pray at the Yasukuni shrine because he did not know how much longer he would live.

The issue has touched a nerve in Taiwan, and rightly so.  Last year I made a visit to Yaskuni myself.  It's a very sombre place, and steeped in history. Adjacent to the shrine is the Yasukuni War Museum, which I also visited.  Outside the building it lists the different exhibits inside.  For example, "World War II", "The Meiji Restoration", etc.  And at the bottom of the list is the last exhibit, simply titled "The China Incident."

Inside, great pains are made by the museum to explain that Japan was never at war with China, because Tokyo had never "declared" war.  Thus, the word "incident".  After reading Iris Chang's excellent book on the Nanjing Massacre, I was anxious to read what the museum had to say.  Indeed, it was simply called the "Nanking Incident". This is the exact wording:

After the Japanese surrounded Nanking in December 1937, Gen. Matsui Iwane distributed maps to his men with foreign settlements and the Safety Zone marked in red ink. Matsui told them that they were to observe military rules to the letter and that anyone committing unlawful acts would be severely punished.  He also warned Chinese troops to surrender, but Commander-in-Chief Tang Shengzhi ignored the warning.  Instead, he ordered his men to defend Nanking to the death, and then abandoned them.  The Chinese were soundly defeated, suffering heavy casualties.  Inside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives in peace.

I added the Italics. If that's not enough, here is the official Japanese take on "the Russo-Japanese War to the Manchurian Incident".

Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent annexation of Korea resolved concerns about national security, which had been festering for years. Relief and exultation delayed the Japanese response to a new world situation. When World War I began, Japan cooperated with the Allies, capturing German possessions (Qingdao and the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands), and dispatching a special fleet to the Mediterranean Sea and other troops to Siberia. Meanwhile, at the Washington Conference in the U.S., plans were made to disrupt the new, postwar order in Asia and to prevent further Japanese expansion. The Chinese, now nationalistic and xenophobic after the revolution, focused their animosity on Japan.  An anti-Japanese movement in Manchuria and discord within the Kwantung Army resulted in the Manchurian Incident and the establishment of Manchukuo.

The exhibit goes on to say that Manchukuo is territory that is "currently governed by the Chinese."

Clearly, this is the way that the Japanese military establishment views its past, and on that note I sympathize with the Chinese.  Anyone that knows me knows I love Japan and Japanese culture.  Japan, and what the country has been able to accomplish in the past 60 years, sets a great example for other countries, like China.  Japan is industrious, the people are hard-working, and it has been able to pull off something perhaps China is failing at: holding onto old traditions while embracing western culture and modernity (which are not the same, I hasten to add).

Nonetheless, places like the Yasukuni Museum puts a taint on Japan. I have no problem with Japanese leaders remembering their war dead, but enshrining class A war criminals goes too far. 

Back to Lee Tung-hui. His visit is being criticized by lawmakers in his former party, the KMT. This, from a second article in the Taipei Times:

KMT lawmakers Hung Hsiu-chu and Joanna Lei called a press conference yesterday morning to condemn Lee's planned visit, calling Lee a "liar" for saying he wished to honor his deceased brother.

They said the spirit of Lee's elder brother had been brought back to Taiwan about 20 years ago and put in Chihua Temple, Peipu Township, Hsinchu County.

They showed a picture of a tablet bearing the Japanese name of Lee's brother, his date of birth and pointed to the name of Lee's father, Lee Ching-long, as evidence.

"There is no tablet, remains or any spirit of his brother at Yasukuni. There is only an enshrinement list there. The spirits of [Taiwanese] soldiers enshrined at Yasukuni were all relocated to the Chihua temple. I don't know what Lee is going to honor." Hung said.

Hung said she suspected that Lee's planned visit to the shrine was aimed at infuriating China.

I would guess the two lawmakers are correct.  As much as I support the right of the Taiwanese to determine their own future, actions like Lee's can only be seen to enrage China, and he has a long history of such actions. Hopefully Chinese leaders will ignore Lee's provocative move.

If this is the best that we can expect from Democratic contenders for President, it will be a boring campaign season for China-watchers.  China has only come up fleetingly so far in the Democratic debates, but Senator and leading Democratic nominee Barack Obama finally discussed China's military buildup and relations with Taiwan in a speech given on the Senate floor.  But what he said was hardly shocking.

He talked about China's "peaceful rise", called for more military transparency, and a continuation of the status-quo in cross-strait relations.  Is China too sensitive a topic for presidential contenders to tackle?  It seems so.

Obama's comments, and the full story, can be found here.