23.9.12

THE Diaoyu Islands (known as Senkaku in Japan and Tiaoyutai in Taiwan) are a group of uninhabited islets lost in the East China Sea. They measure 7 square kilometers. To have an idea of how tiny the islets are we can compare them to the smallness of Macau, a region that totals 29.5 square kilometers. The combined size of the five islets and three rocks that constitute the Diaoyu archipelago is smaller than the Macau peninsula, which totals only 9.3 kilometers.
But tension over the islets has been growing increasingly hysterical. The dispute started to rise to the fore again about a month ago, when activists who had departed from Hong Kong (including a Macau resident) arrived at the islets carrying Chinese and Taiwanese flags. They were swiftly detained by the Japanese and released after diplomatic pressure. The activists were received as heroes in Hong Kong. Another episode occurred on September 7, when a Chinese boat collided with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel near the islets.
Since then, things have gotten out of hand and the perennial anti-Japanese sentiment has hit China once again. The resentment between both countries is historical, and manifests itself from time to time.  Yesterday, crowds of Chinese protested against Japan outside its embassy in Beijing and in many other Chinese cities, including neighboring Zhuhai, were Japanese cars were burnt. According to the Associated Press (AP), the protests are being “fanned by a feverish campaign in Chinese state media”. Inconsistently, Beijing authorities seem to be concerned with the unrest and AP reports that “users of China’s popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo site couldn’t search for the term ‘anti-Japan protests’” yesterday morning.
But let’s stop and think for a minute. Are these islets worth all this noise? Trying to explain the reasons for this row, the BBC states that the islands controlled by Japan “matter because they are close to strategically important shipping lanes, offer rich fishing grounds and are thought to contain oil deposits”. But have these resources any importance at all for China or Japan? I don’t think so. The islets are negligible: if good sense were to prevail, neither country would never even bother about their existence. What we are seeing is a kind of a phallic dispute between the two nations with the worst Chinese nationalistic rhetoric taking hold.
A similar crazed episode is happening in parts of the Muslim world because of an obscure video called, “The Innocence of Muslims”, that was posted on YouTube. The protests have been spreading after the deadly attacks on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the American Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff. In this case we are witnessing the rise of anti-American sentiment (and even anti-Western as the German embassy in Sudan was also attacked) reportedly because of a video that most of the protesters probably haven’t even seen…
Both stories (the islets and the ridiculous video) are being expanded as a result of media coverage, which indirectly fuels the protests. But time is the best judge. There’s a thesis in journalism that states all events reach their “Kairos moment”. The Greek word Kairos means the right, opportune or supreme moment. This theory holds that newsworthy events will eventually reach a point of decreasing interest. Hence, when stories reach their so-called “Kairos moment” they vanish from the headlines suddenly. But nothing prevents the same event (maybe “dressed in other clothes”) from reappearing. If not appeased by those with special responsibilities (members of the government), anti-Japanese sentiment in China, and anti-American in the Muslim world, will keep hitting the headlines again and again.
(in MDT)

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