‘Education of hatred’: Killing of Japanese boy sparks soul searching in China over rising nationalism

The tragic loss of a young life has once again thrown a spotlight on the complex relationship between Asia’s two biggest economies, which has been shaped by their wartime history and changing power dynamics brought about by China’s rise.

The 10-year-old, born to a Japanese father and Chinese mother, was fatally stabbed on his way to school by a man in the southern city of Shenzhen last Wednesday. It was the second knife attack on Japanese children and third assault on foreigners in China in recent months.

Authorities in Beijing have refused to disclose the motive in each case, describing them as “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country.

But to some Shenzhen residents and online commentators, the daylight killing in one of China’s most cosmopolitan cities has prompted urgent reflection on the role of nationalistic propaganda and xenophobia in fueling such attacks.

“As a Chinese, I feel heartbroken, outraged and ashamed,” said a Shenzhen resident who laid a white rose outside the Japanese school following the boy’s death last Thursday.

“This kind of violence is the result of long-term education of hatred … There’s no good in instilling hatred from a young age,” said the resident, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The resident’s comments echo a groundswell of commentaries and online posts calling for a reckoning on anti-Japan sentiment, many of which have since been censored by Chinese social media platforms.

“The ‘anti-Japan rhetoric’ based on nationalist narratives has increased to dominate the internet,” a Chinese blogger said in a now-removed viral article on social platform WeChat. “These online remarks … will inevitably spill over from the screen and impact the ‘real world,’” they wrote.

The killing has shaken the Japanese community in China, with some of Japan’s biggest companies offering to repatriate staff members and their families. The development risks undermining Beijing’s recent efforts to court Japanese businesses to expand investment in China, amid a record exodus of foreign capital from the country’s flagging economy.

White flowers are placed at the location where the boy was fatally stabbed.

Kyodo News/Getty Images

Historic anger

Japan has long been a target of Chinese nationalist ire, rooted in its brutal invasion and occupation of China in World War II. Generations of Chinese grew up learning about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in school textbooks and on state television.

That feeling of resentment is further fueled by territorial disputes in the East China Sea and geopolitical tensions, as Beijing seethes at what it sees as Japan’s deepening alliance with the United States intended to contain its rise.

China has ramped up patriotic education under leader Xi Jinping, who frequently evokes the country’s “century of humiliation” by imperial powers to rally public support behind his nationalistic agenda to assert Chinese power on the world stage.

The fatal stabbing of the Japanese boy coincided with the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of northeast China, an emotionally charged day commemorated with sirens and moments of silence across the country.

The sensitive timing has further fueled speculation that the attack was motivated by hatred.

A rare statement issued last week by dozens of Chinese people living in Japan condemned the assault and called for reflections on the “underlying causes.”

“The extreme nationalist hate education against Japan has been prevalent in China for a long time. It has obscured some Chinese people’s understanding of Japan, and even indulged ignorance and evil,” the statement said.

Signed by intellectuals, professionals, businesspeople and students with their real names, the statement mounted a sharp criticism of Beijing’s policies and vowed to change the “disturbing situation.”

Beijing has denied the accusations.

“There is no so-called Japan-hating education in China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Monday.

“We advocate learning from history, not to perpetuate hatred, but to prevent the tragedy of war from happening again.”

Nationalistic clickbait

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has long cultivated nationalism to shore up legitimacy.

Under Xi, China’s heavily censored social media has seen a surge of ultra-nationalistic, anti-Japan rhetoric. In some cases, the anger appears to have been fanned by the Chinese government and state media to exert pressure on Tokyo, such as the coordinated outrage last year over Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

In other instances, nationalism is used as clickbait by online influencers, who often peddle jingoistic rhetoric and conspiracy theories to compete for traffic. A Chinese man recently went viral after posting a video of himself defacing the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a controversial symbol of Japan’s military legacy that honors the country’s war dead, including some convicted of war crimes.

Some of that online hatred has turned to Japanese schools in China’s biggest cities with a large presence of Japanese businesses and workers. Since last year, hundreds of videos fanning hostility and suspicion of these facilities have emerged on Chinese video-streaming sites. Many called for the schools to be shut down, and some even accused them of secretly training Japanese spies.

“(Conspiracies against) Japanese schools have become a cheat code for viral content,” a blogger wrote on WeChat last week, after analyzing nearly 300 clips on video platform Kuaishou, which he said drew more than 2 million upvotes.

Following the article, Kuaishou suspended more than 90 accounts that fanned hostility between China and Japan, the platform said in a statement Saturday.

Some have voiced concerns about the effect of growing online xenophobia on Chinese children.

Zhang, a teaching assistant at a private school in Shanghai, said she noticed children as young as 6 portraying Japanese as villains.

“Little boys in the first grade would call Japanese people (slurs) when they see Japanese flags in their picture books … They also draw battle scenes, in which the enemies are always either Japanese or American,” she told CNN. “We never taught them any of that stuff at school,” Zhang said, adding she suspected the children had picked up the anti-Japan sentiment from TV dramas, online short videos or their families.

‘Absolutely unacceptable’

On Monday, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa urged Beijing to crack down on online anti-Japan posts and ensure the safety of Japanese citizens in a meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in New York.

“Groundless, malicious and anti-Japanese social media postings and others, including those targeting Japanese schools, directly affect the safety of children and are absolutely unacceptable,” Kamikawa told Wang, demanding a thorough crackdown as soon as possible, the Associated Press reported, citing a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Wang, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, vowed to protect the safety of all foreign citizens in China and urged Japan to “remain calm and rational” to avoid “policization and escalation.”

A Japanese mother of two in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said her husband’s automotive company had given families the option to return home, but her family decided to stay.

The mother, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the extreme nationalist rhetoric online did not represent the views of Chinese people she has met during her two years living in China.

“I know so many people who are not against Japan, who love Japan,” she told CNN.

“I’m almost torn in the middle. I’m so sad about the tragedy. But at the same time, I’m also so sad that so many Japanese people are hating China about this one incident.

“One crazy person can do crazy things, doesn’t mean everyone in the country is crazy. I’ve only received love and kindness from the Chinese people I met in Guangzhou.”

She said some of her Chinese friends who live in nearby Shenzhen went to lay flowers at the Japanese school.

By Friday evening, the school had received more than 1,000 bouquets, according to the Japanese consulate in Guangzhou – including from residents of faraway cities.

Some tributes carried a note of apology. “Child, I’m sorry, please rest in peace,” said a note signed from “a mother in Shenzhen.”

“Wish there’s no hatred in heaven,” another reads.