Chinese censors have deleted reports of a small protest against an international ruling that rejected China’s territorial claims over the South China Sea, highlighting Beijing’s efforts to head off any domestic pressure that might force its hand internationally.
The protest follows a ruling by an international arbitration court in The Hague that rejected the basis for Chinese claims to waters in the South China Sea also claimed by the Philippines.
China’s “nine-dash line” delineates most of the sea — an area rich in oil and fish — and runs counter to claims by most of the other nations around it. China refused to participate in its own defence after the case was brought by the Philippines.
While rejecting the court’s rulings, Beijing has also been at pains to avoid nationalist street protests that might limit its options diplomatically or force it into a confrontation that it does not want.
Last week, Beijing deployed unusually high numbers of police to the streets surrounding the Philippine embassy to prevent any protests from materialising.
The protest on Sunday by a few dozen people waving flags and banners in front of a KFC outlet in Laoting county, in Hebei province near the port city of Tianjin, attracted only a small crowd of onlookers, according to photos posted online and quickly deleted.
The protesters carried a long banner saying “Down with the US, Japan, Korea and the Philippines! Love our Chinese people!”
Nationalist protesters most commonly rally against Japan — which occupied large swathes of China in the 1930s and 1940s — and the US, which they believe has hampered China’s rise through alliances with Asian nations, particularly Japan.
“The so-called South China Sea arbitration is just a start key for the US having ulterior motives to agitate the South China Sea situation to reinforce its hegemony,” the official Xinhua news agency wrote on Monday.
The reference to Korea, which Chinese nationalists usually make common cause against Japan, refers to an agreement between Washington and Seoul to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system.
THAAD “is a clear, present, substantive threat to China’s security interests”, the state-owned English language paper China Daily said in an editorial on Friday.
China is not the only country to clamp down on nationalist sentiment following the Hague’s ruling. Vietnam has often sparred with China in waters it disputes, but on Sunday police detained about dozens of people who had gathered for anti-Chinese protests in Hanoi, the capital.
Philippine politicians have also avoided playing up their victory, to keep calm and avoid destabilising domestic pressure for a confrontation with their much larger neighbour.
By: Lucy Hornby (Financial Times, Beijing).
Photo: Getty Images (via BBC).
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