Mapping China's 'hurt feelings'

• Source: The Global Times
• [20:01 June 04 2009]
• Comments

(Map from Arctosia)

When China feels offended, the Foreign Ministry's diplomatic response almost invariably contains the words “hurt feelings” to describe the damage done to the Chinese people. “The (incident/statement) grossly interfered in China's internal affairs, gravely hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and damaged the political basis of China-(offending country) bilateral relations” is a typical response.

One curious Chinese blogger and journalism master's degree candidate at Peking University, Fang Kecheng, has written his thesis on the number of times the Chinese people's feelings have been hurt and what countries have done it the most.

He found a sharp distinction between the Mao era (1949-1978) when Chinese feelings were hurt only three times, and the reform era (1978-present) when a bar graph he created showed hurt feelings spiking at 11 times in 1989 and 1998 and 12 times in 2000.

Fang went to the online archives of People's Daily and found that between 1946 and 2006 exactly 21 countries and organizations have hurt the feelings of all 1.3 billion or so Chinese people. Japan was the worst offender, with 58 times beginning in 1985.

The others:

USA: 27 times, starting in 1980, when Los Angeles flew the Taiwan flag for the Olympics

NATO: 10 times, mostly relating to the 1999 Belgrade embassy bombing

India: 9 times, starting in 1959 and mostly relating to border issues

France: 6 times, starting in 1989

Nobel Committee: 4 times

Germany: 3 times, starting with a meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1990

Vatican City: 3 times, starting in 2000

EU: 2 times, starting in 1996

Guatemala: 2 times, both in 1997

Indonesia: 1959, when a newspaper inflamed anti-Chinese sentiment

Albania: 1978, for criticism of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China

Vietnam: 1979, for a high official's slander of China

UK: 1994, over the Taiwan issue