Anti-Japanese Sloganeering in China Turns Revolutionary

Chinese vendor bites back

I have been following the recent row between China and Japan over a small set of islands north of Taiwan. While most of the rhetoric publicly available from the Chinese side is pretty standard nationalistic nonsense (“Kill all Japanese!”), the following was an intriguing twist.

The sign reads:

就算政府不养老，也要收复钓鱼岛
没物权，没人权，钓鱼岛上争主权
买不起房，修不起坟，寸土不让日本人

No medical insurance, no social security, yet the Diaoyu Islands must be in your heart.

Even if the government does not take care of the elderly, we should recover the Diaoyu Islands.

No property rights, no human rights, but [our nation] contends for the sovereign rights of the Diaoyu Islands.

[We] can’t buy a home, can’t build a tomb, but we contest every inch of ground with the Japanese.

It made me think of similar nonsense at home, but clearly their situation is much worse. Senseless violence over territory and blind ideology is pretty useless if a country can’t even take care of its own people.