776 { China’s Quest
demonstrate the deep elite apprehension that foreign transgressions might be
transformed into challenges to the party-state. Once people are in the streets
venting hatred against Japanese or US transgressions, it is very easy for the
target of anger to shift from those countries to China’s internal shortcomings,
with CCP leaders held responsible. State-condoned nationalist demonstra-
tions are virtually the only form of organized public political activity tol-
erated in China, and people quickly seize such opportunities to raise other
grievances. Any hint of weakness by the CCP in confronting the foreign “hu-
miliation” du jour could prompt a shift from foreign to internal demands.
Shirk imagines Chinese students once again swarming from Beijing’s uni-
versity district to Tiananmen Square carrying posters saying “Down with the
America-loving CCP toadies.”^25
Protests over nationalist issues are also dangerous because those causes
cut across social groups and regions. Protests against land seizures or envi-
ronmental hot spots are intrinsically parochial, although there are sometimes
copycat actions in other cities. Nationalist issues appeal instantaneously to
people in different cities, regions, and groups. Protests over nationalist causes
are also more dangerous for China’s central authorities because nationalist
causes are able to tap into deep emotions of group identity and individual
meaning in ways that mere “economic” issues cannot. Nationalist appeals can
rouse in people intense anger and a deep sense of identification that makes
them willing to kill and even sacrifice their own lives to avenge the insults
against “their” nation. Lost wages or pensions, official corruption, or envi-
ronmental pollution is less likely to rouse such passion. The mob psychology
associated with large street protests also enhances their volatility. Passions
are contagious, and people feel empowered by numbers and protected by
seeming anonymity. Seemingly lost in a crowd, people may do things that
would be unthinkable under normal circumstances, perhaps introduce anti-
regime slogans into a protest or confront the police.
A final linkage between China’s aggrieved nationalism and foreign policy
is the interaction between PLA views and CCP elite politics. While there
is no evidence of PLA foreign policy lobbying since the 1995–1996 Taiwan
Strait situation, there is abundant evidence of expression of hard-line PLA
views on how to deal with the United States and Japan. In just one year, 2010,
for example, on seven occasions PLA officers either called for or themselves
dealt out tougher treatment of the United States: calling for China to sell off
US Treasury bonds in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan, calling the
United States “hegemonist” at the Security and Economic Dialogue, verbally
challenging US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a Singapore conference,
protesting Secretary of State Clinton’s assertion that the United States had a
national interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, warning
the United States and South Korea that joint military exercises threatened
China, calling for PLA-N warships to be deployed to the Senkaku/Diaoyu