2
demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Down with Japanese imperialism!” “Roll out,
Japanese bastard!” “Boycott Japanese goods!”
These incidents remind people that Chinese memory of the national trauma
inflicted by the Japanese invasion remains alive. Collectively, they seriously
overshadowed the 25
th
anniversary of the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty, an
important occasion to celebrate bilateral friendship. This wave of anti-Japanese outrage
in China is powered by the rise of popular nationalism rather than orchestrated by the
Chinese government, which is often forced to react to the public uproars and to try hard
to defuse them. Still, the visceral nationalist sentiment has deep roots in the decades of
centralized school education and official propaganda that implanted pernicious myths in
the national collective memory. Official history of the Sino-Japanese war in the Mao-era
emphasized communist victory and blamed only a handful of Japanese militarists. From
the 1980s, domestic political needs prompted the government to purvey new myths
highlighting Japanese war atrocities and Chinese victimhood. But the inconsistency in
the official historiography simply undermined the images of not only Japan and but also
Chinese government itself. The current Chinese popular hostility to Japan sprang from
both the public’s hatred of Japan simulated by the post-Mao era history propaganda and
their cynicism toward the government, who they believed had lied about the history in the
past.
While most scholars of contemporary Chinese nationalism acknowledge that the
popular nationalism and official propaganda are different but also interconnected, not all
believe that the former would be strong enough to challenge the later or fundamentally
divert the course of Chinese foreign policy. Many point to the weak influence of public
Convention