The Standard
In April of 2005, stone-throwing was the main item on the agenda in relations between China and Japan as thousands of young Chinese staged anti- Japanese protests outside a consulate, the ambassador's home and even restaurants.
But two years on, throwing stones has turned to melting ice as Premier Wen Jiabao heads to Japan next week for the first trip to Tokyo by a Chinese leader in seven years.
So what happened to the nationalist sentiment that spun out of control and fueled the crisis in relations
"I think the impression Chinese people have of Japan has not had any fundamental change," said Zhang Jianyong, a Beijing businessman who took to the streets for the 2005 protests.
But at the same time, he says, the average Chinese is taking a calmer approach toward his northeast Asian neighbor, a huge trading partner but also a rival for influence in the region.
"We don't need to be as excited as two years ago," said Zhang. "The environment is more relaxed, China's national power is increasing, the confidence of ordinary Chinese people is strengthening and we don't take some provocative behavior as seriously."
The biggest provocation - visits by former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which Chinese see as a symbol of Japan's past militarism - has subsided since Shinzo Abe took power last year.
But public sentiment in China has also calmed despite unresolved disputes over territory and energy resources in the East China Sea and, most emoti
vely, Japan's invasion and occupation of China from 1931 to 1945.
Much has to do with a change in the attitudes of both governments, each of which were alarmed in their own ways by the protests of 2005, rare in a country whose communist leaders frown on public demonstrations.
In China, leaders had to tread a careful line between ensuring the protests did not turn on the government without quashing nationalist sentiment that is a source of its legitimacy.
"The state is extremely ambivalent about popular nationalism because it worries that these nationalist protests will get out of control, potentially redirecting ire against the state," said Peter Gries, author of China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy and a scholar at the University of Oklahoma.
In the end, the thousands who marched in the streets two years ago forced the government's hand, leaving it little wiggle room in its Japan policy while Koizumi was in power and undermining its efforts to assure the world that its rapid rise would be peaceful.
Now China has been careful not to squander the opportunity the new Japanese leader has brought to improve relations.
In a sign of its changing tolerance level for public displays of nationalism, one of the student leaders from 2005 first accepted and then declined an interview, citing his university's more stringent regulations on speaking out on the issue.
When Abe sparked an outcry last month by saying there was no proof of government or military involvement in the use of sex slaves during World War ll, the reaction from China was subdued.
"This is an issue where you could jump in, but they didn't do that," said Wenran Jiang, a political scientist at the University of Alberta who follows Sino-Japanese relations. "The recent coverage shows clear guidelines not to make inflammatory editorials or comments."
But Jiang also thinks the 2005 protests caused a change in Japan. "It served as a shock, not only to the Japanese public, but also to the conservative- leaning political elites," he said. "The raw emotions expressed simply could not be explained away by pure manipulation by the Chinese party."
But the emotions of young urban Chinese like Zhang, who formed the backbone of the protesters, have since cooled. "Ordinary Chinese people have adopted a relatively restrained and understanding attitude to certain aspects of the government's work," he said.
REUTERS