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Shadows of the Past
On August 4, 2003, workers dug up five metal barrels at a construction site in the
city of Qiqihar in northeast China. After they punctured the barrels, an oil-like substance
leaked into the soil, killing one person and injured more than 40. It was later confirmed
that the material was mustard gas, and those metal barrels were a small fraction of an
estimated 700,000 chemical weapons abandoned by Imperial Japanese Army after the
1937-45 Sino-Japanese war. Beijing lodged an official complaint to Japanese
ambassador, and State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan warned Tokyo that the news had aroused
the “moral indignation” among the Chinese people. The Chinese public was indeed
furious. Several Chinese websites launched an on-line petition campaign, demanding
that Japan apologize, clean up any remaining chemical weapons in China, and pay
compensation to the victims. More than one million people signed on the petition, and
activists presented it to the Japanese embassy on September 18, the anniversary of the
Manchuria Incident in 1931 when Japan invaded northeast China.
The Qiqihar gas incident is only one example of the recent Chinese public
agitation against Japan. Shortly after the incident, a sex scandal involving hundreds of
Japanese tourists and Chinese prostitutes in the southern city Zhuhai was exposed on the
internet. Tens and thousands of netizens blasted the Japanese for hurting Chinese feeling
on the eve of September 18, the day of China’s “national humiliation.” Subsequently,
nearly one thousand Chinese students took to the streets in the city of Xi’an in October to
protest an obscene skit performed by several Japanese students during a university
cultural festival. Seeing the skit as a deliberate Japanese insult against China, the
Convention