ABSTRACT
This chapter will analyse a commentary that was published in the People’s Daily following a series of ‘anti-Japan’ demonstrations which had taken place in a number of Chinese cities during the month of April in 2005.1 Although these protests did not explicitly challenge the authority of the CCP, as in 1989, and were not organized by a quasi-spiritual qigong group that the CCP leadership perceived to be a threat to its authority, as in 1999, the demonstrations directed against Japan did indirectly challenge the leadership of the CCP. This was because they presented the Party leadership with a dilemma over how best to bring them under control. If the leadership allowed the demonstrations to continue for too long, historical precedents suggested that they could open up a space which would enable the expression and mobilization of discontent against the rule of the CCP. However, other historical precedents indicated that bringing the protests to an end too soon could also open up a similar space as protestors reacted to the government’s suppression of their patriotic actions by challenging its authority. Consequently, as Shirk points out, ‘[w]henever anti-Japanese emotions boil over into large-scale protests that threaten to spin out of control, it takes a delicate touch to halt the protests without having them turn against the CCP instead’ (Shirk 2007a: 144-5). In light of the fact that the CCP leadership was able do just that and successfully bring the ‘anti-Japan’ demonstrations to an end without encountering either of the two outcomes listed above, the aim of this chapter is, by intensively analysing a commentary that was published in response to these demonstrations, to better understand how the discourse of stability was used to legitimate the authority of the CCP in bringing an end to the ‘anti-Japan’ demonstrations. As with Chapter 4, this chapter will only intensively analyse a single article
on account of the fact that the usage of stability throughout the government’s campaign to bring the demonstrations to an end was relatively consistent. As such, this article is considered to be largely representative of how stability was used in the campaign. That said, the usage of stability in other significant articles published in this period, where different, is also detailed in the
‘co-textual analysis’ section of this chapter in order to give a more complete understanding. As was explained in Chapter 2, the analyses of the editorials will begin by
presenting a contextual analysis of the events that situates the publication of the 17 April editorial in the political context of this period. Following on from this, an intensive analysis of the editorial will be carried out at the paragraphical level so as to make explicit my reading of the text. Moreover, as with the intensive analyses carried out in the previous chapters, the aim of this reading is to answer three principal questions:
1 What meaning was given to stability in the commentary? 2 How did the editorial attempt to persuade the reader of the validity of this meaning?
