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BEIJING: As a landmark Japanese Buddhist temple on Friday cancelled
its plans to host a ceremony for the Olympic torch relay, the
Chinese government appeared to have taken steps to keep its citizens
from turning anti-foreign as a result of state media’s
condemnation of critical news coverage abroad of the brutal
suppression of Tibetan riots.
China has urged its people to contain their
patriotism, in the first sign Beijing may be growing uncomfortable
with a nationalist outburst over the Tibet issue that it has tacitly
supported.
A dispatch issued late Thursday by
state-controlled Xinhua news agency railed against “despicable”
Western media coverage of the unrest in Tibet and said resulting
Chinese indignation should be “cherished.”
But it also said nationalist energies should be
expressed in a “rational” way and focused on building the
nation.
“Patriotic fervor should be channeled into a
rational track and must be transformed into real action toward doing
our work well,” said the report.
China’s government and state media have
repeatedly condemned what they call bias in foreign coverage of
China’s crackdown on Tibetan riots, which erupted in Lhasa on
March 14 and spilled over into other Tibetan-populated regions.
The government’s stance appears to have
helped fuel attacks on the Chinese Internet directed at foreign
media.
A number of online campaigns have been
launched, including one calling for a boycott of French goods due to
protests against China’s Tibet policies that threw the Beijing
Olympic torch relay’s Paris leg into chaos last week.
Web users also have set up the website
www.anti-cnn. com that criticizes the US-based news network’s
alleged anti-China bias.
On Friday, the email boxes of major news
organizations in Beijing, including AFP, were flooded with emails
furious over “vicious distortions” in Tibet coverage.
China’s Communist Party government, which
swiftly quashes any expressions of public opinion it does not
like, has so far allowed the attacks.
Xinhua’s report appears to fit a pattern
in which the control-conscious government has given free rein to
such sentiments when it serves party interests, but curb them when
they appear to be spiraling out of control.
After US forces mistakenly bombed the Chinese
embassy in Belgrade in 1999, large anti-US protests were allowed in
China before the government put an end to them.
In 2005, protesters were allowed to throw rocks
and eggs at Japan’s embassy in Beijing, among other anti-Japanese
actions, triggered by a range of grievances between the two Asian
rivals.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a Japanese Buddhist temple
has pulled out of plans to host a ceremony for the Olympic torch
relay because of concerns over Tibet, Jiji Press reported Friday
quoting local officials.
Zenkoji Temple, a landmark in Nagano City, which
hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, cited China’s “crackdown” in
Tibet for the decision, which forced the city to change the starting
point of the relay route, the report said.
-- AFP
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