BEIJING \u2014 THE Chinese government, as part of a long-running dispute over islands in the East China Sea, recently declared an \u201cair defense identification zone\u201d in the area, raising tensions with Japan and the United States. In my view, the significance of this step is not the warning to Japan, but the patriotic stance it represents. For a long time a strain of popular opinion in China had criticized the government for being weak on the issue. The new stance can be seen as a response to these sentiments. In this connection I am reminded of a pair of incidents last summer. On July 17, in the town of Linwu in Hunan Province, in central China, a melon farmer, Deng Zhengjia, and his wife had a dispute with municipal officials by their roadside watermelon stall. Several officers beat Mr. Deng, and he fell to the ground and died. According to witnesses, he had been struck on the head with a steelyard weight before he fell.<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 THE Chinese government, as part of a long-running dispute over islands in the East China Sea, recently declared an \u201cair defense identification zone<\/a>\u201d in the area, raising tensions with Japan and the United States.<\/p>\n In my view, the significance of this step is not the warning to Japan, but the patriotic stance it represents. For a long time a strain of popular opinion in China had criticized the government for being weak on the issue. The new stance can be seen as a response to these sentiments.<\/p>\n In this connection I am reminded of a pair of incidents last summer.<\/p>\n On July 17, in the town of Linwu in Hunan Province, in central China, a melon farmer, Deng Zhengjia, and his wife had a dispute with municipal officials by their roadside watermelon stall. Several officers beat Mr. Deng, and he fell to the ground and died<\/a>. According to witnesses, he had been struck on the head with a steelyard weight before he fell.<\/p>\n On July 27, in a shooting in an apartment building near Miami, a gunman killed six people before being shot dead by the police.<\/p>\n These two episodes would seem, on the surface, completely unrelated.<\/p>\n But when, on July 28, Chen Mingming, deputy governor of Guizhou Province, in southwest China, posted news of the Florida shooting on his microblog, a curious link between them emerged.<\/p>\n \u201cHow come there\u2019s yet another shooting in America?!\u201d Mr. Chen exclaimed.<\/p>\n \u201cHow come there\u2019s yet another assault by city management officers in China?!\u201d an Internet user shot back, referencing the death in Linwu.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people just can\u2019t wait to see tragic incidents take place in our country, and then they blow things all out of proportion,\u201d Mr. Chen responded. \u201cThese unpatriotic people are degenerates \u2014 the dregs of society!\u201d<\/p>\n A single comment about a melon vendor\u2019s death was enough to send this high-ranking Communist Party official into a paroxysm of rage. \u201cThese people so love to bad-mouth their native country, but then they hang around here instead of going off to America!\u201d Mr. Chen fumed. \u201cOff you go, hurry up! I\u2019m all for it. But before you leave, be sure to get some plastic surgery done \u2014 you don\u2019t want them to see you\u2019re a Chinese! … These people hate their country so much they feel miserable that they\u2019re Chinese, so let\u2019s pack them off to America \u2014 the sooner the better! Such riffraff!\u201d<\/p>\n But his effort to frame the question as one of patriotism backfired spectacularly, setting off a huge controversy.<\/p>\n Some critics pointed out that cursing one\u2019s government is not the same thing as cursing one\u2019s country. Others challenged Mr. Chen\u2019s love-it-or-leave-it logic: \u201cIf your window is broken, don\u2019t you want to fix it? Or do you move into your neighbor\u2019s house? Or do you make a song-and-dance about how your door is intact? If you love this country, it\u2019s natural that you take time to point out its imperfections, for that way you can make it better.\u201d But the majority objected mainly to his intemperate language.<\/p>\n Mr. Chen\u2019s supporters strongly feel that the government is <\/em>the country, but he realized he had gone too far: He made a remark to the effect that in the future he would keep his cool.<\/p>\n The real question that needs discussing is, does criticism of the government necessarily mean criticism of the country? But all we got was a debate about rhetoric and whether a deputy governor had expressed himself properly.<\/p>\n The patriotic education promoted by the Communist Party over the last 64 years has managed to equate \u201clove of country\u201d with love of the party and the government. But when the distinction between country and ruler is erased, patriotism ends up being hijacked, and easily manipulated by a narrow-minded nationalism.<\/p>\n In August and September of last year, the controversy over the islands \u2014 known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese \u2014 ignited two rounds of demonstrations in many Chinese cities, which included violent attacks on Japanese-owned businesses and Japanese-made cars. In a shocking scene recorded on video, a motorist in the city of Xi\u2019an, Li Jianli<\/a>, had his skull smashed in while trying to protect his Toyota.<\/p>\n What makes me all the more uneasy is that it\u2019s not just ordinary citizens who confuse nation and government. Some intellectuals do, too. A scholar friend once said to me, \u201cHere at home we can criticize our country, but when we go abroad we need to defend it. In the same way, at home it\u2019s O.K. to argue with one\u2019s parents, but outside the home we never tolerate criticism of them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re criticizing the government, not the nation,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n Later I posted this on my microblog: \u201cSome people still aren\u2019t clear about the difference between nation and government. And so anyone who aims a criticism at the government gets denounced as a traitor. Let me make an analogy: The nation is like one\u2019s parents, and the government is like a steward; loving the steward and loving one\u2019s parents are completely different things. One can\u2019t change one\u2019s parents, but one has every right to replace the steward.\u201d<\/p>\n One of my readers reposted my remarks, adding: \u201cMom and Dad, where are you? I want to file a complaint about the steward.\u201d Our parents will never hear the complaint, for the steward has supplanted them.<\/p>\n The steward, however, is beginning to have a rough time. Last year, under cover of the anti-Japan protests, some aired their disaffection. One slogan urging war on Japan contained a double meaning. \u201cLet\u2019s fight!\u201d it read. \u201cIf we win, we get the Diaoyu Islands; if we lose, we get a new China.\u201d By \u201cnew China\u201d it meant a China in which the Communist Party was no longer the dominant power.<\/p>\n