TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — High school students in Shandong province, China, sparked controversy by reenacting the assassination of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a school sports event.
Hunan provincial government's news portal Red Net published an article on Thursday (Oct. 12) criticizing the environment and education that led to such behavior. It said the school should bear the primary responsibility, per CNA.
During a recent autumn sports event at the Zaozhuang No. 3 Middle School in Shandong province, students performed a play depicting the assassination of Shinzo Abe. The student portraying Shinzo Abe acted out being shot.
After the student portraying Shinzo Abe in the video drops to the ground, other students then hold up a red banner with the words "Two gunshots, stone-dead, dirty water brings lasting harm.” The high school audience responds with applause.
The message on the banner is a reference to Japan’s recent controversial decision to dispose of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party reacted to Japan’s decision with scorn and an import ban on Japanese seafood.
Shinzo Abe was a controversial figure in Asia. He drew the ire of people in China and South Korea by visiting Japan’s Yasunkuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s World War Two surrender.
Beijing and Seoul see the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s past military aggression. It honors 14 Japanese wartime leaders who were convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal.
Videos of the Shandong performance quickly circulated on social media platforms. Reactions among netizens were mixed.
Some Chinese netizens expressed concern and disapproval at the behavior in the video. Others complimented the students and said they showed creativity.
Zaozhuang’s local education bureau criticized the school for “allowing the students to make mistakes.” One local netizen responded to the criticism by saying “the only issue is some details in the performance are off.”
The article on Red Net pointed out that the video, which it called an example of "dark humor" might have unexpected negative consequences and potentially affect foreign relations. It cited another controversial episode in early 2020 when Chinese social media platforms circulated a web article titled "Why Kazakhstan Longs to Return to China."
The viral article stoked nationalistic emotions among Chinese readers and spread quickly on Chinese social media. Kazakhstan's first deputy foreign minister met with China's ambassador and asked him to put a stop to such sentiments.
The Red Net article questioned whether the Shandong school's performance would affect Sino-Japanese relations.
The article noted that in recent years, China has witnessed a rising trend of extreme nationalism, which encourages citizens to "remember history and hatred”. It said such ideas promote exclusion instead of openness.
These ideas have planted seeds of hatred and xenophobia in the hearts of many minors, allowing such online sentiments to flourish, it said. The article concluded by asking what kind of flowers these seeds of hatred might produce in the end.
