Via John Kennedy Apologies for the delay. Along with no free water, Air Asia also does not offer Wi-Fi on its international flights. But here, on the anniversary of the Mukden Incident, is a special Diaoyu Islands links edition. ...

Global Voices reports that according to the Chinese NGO Canyu, "three human rights activists were arrested in September 16, 2012, during the anti-Japan protest." Quoting a translated Canyu post: (Canyu's news brief on 16 September 2012) This morning, the grand anti-Japan rally took place in the Shenzhen downtown area, around Huaqiang North and Citizen Center. Shenzhen democrats such as Jiang Weidong, Ziyuan ...

No two protests are ever the same, as the above video will show. In Changsha, people flip cars. In Dali, they sing the national anthem. In Qingdao, they chant. (Actually, they sing and chant everywhere, but you know what I mean.) There are a lot of banners that read "Japanese Devils," a term that originates from Japan's invasion of China last century. Other slogans are less kind. What's striking, however, i ...

Tea Leaf Nation has this amusing story of former Japanese AV star Sola Aoi, who has more than 13 million followers on Sina Weibo, trying to placate fans on both sides of the sea: Ms. Aoi recently tweeted two images via iPhone from her account (@苍井空)... the first reads “Japanese-Chinese Friendship,” with Ms. Aoi commenting in broken Chinese, “I hope there are good relations between we common people…I am [liv ...

We've gone way beyond civil disobedience. Who are the Chinese attacking? Chinese-owned Japanese restaurants, and Japanese people who may call China home, and now journalists. It is, as the proverb goes, shitting on your carpet to spite the neighbor. We've seen this line of indiscriminate violence in this country before -- it was called the Cultural Revolution. It was bloody terrible. I realize that the gove ...

Anger remains in the air. While a man living in Tokyo who we'll refer to as Doug tells me that the majority of Japanese people are more concerned about issues other than Diaoyu, such as nuclear power, the average Chinese person would as lief see the two countries go to war than let Japan "own" this East China Sea atoll. After a jump, a sharp bit of commentary about this, in the form of a cartoon showing, sh ...

Tension over Japan's purchase of the Diaoyu Islands appears to be escalating. Today, on what appears to be a gorgeous autumn afternoon in Beijing, thousands gathered outside the Japanese embassy to throw rocks, eggs, and bottles. Similar protests apparently happened in more than a dozen cities. Jacob, who runs the excellent YouTube channel BeijingShenghuo, was at the protest today and took the above video ( ...

In a cab yesterday evening, the first words the driver said to me were, "They gonna fight?" I was confused and signaled as such. He nodded at the radio. A broadcaster was in the middle of reporting on the Diaoyu Islands -- sold on Tuesday to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration from their Japanese owners -- and that's when I realized he really meant, "Might they go to war?" "Nah, I don't think so, ...

Four protesters in Shenzhen on Tuesday afternoon came up with a creative way of voicing discontent over the Japanese claims on the Diaoyu islands. With bayonets between their thighs -- and three of them in swimwear -- they chanted things like, "Civilized patriotism, rational Japanese resistance." I think what they mean is: don't do this. Youku video for those in China after the jump. ...

Save the lecture about historical context. We're talking about rocks. Uninhabited rocks. If indeed there's black gold inside the set of rocks known as the Diaoyu Islands, governments should mine 'em together and split the profit, as was proposed once upon a time ago. But nooo, that would be too elementary a solution. We have to act like children, because we are, in the grand scheme of things. Children whose ...