Source: China Digital Times (1/18/24)
Word of the Week: “U-LOCK” (U型锁, U-XÍNGSUǑ)
Posted by Cindy Carter
This month, there have been a number of incidents—some major and some minor—that illustrate the “U-lock” mentality, a phrase that is sometimes used as shorthand to describe vitriolic xenophobic (particularly anti-Japanese) sentiment. “U-lock” refers to a U-shaped metal bicycle lock used to attack the Chinese owner of a Japanese-made car during the 2012 anti-Japanese protests in Xi’an. Ever since, Chinese internet users have used the term “U-lock” to refer to knee-jerk, xenophobic sentiment with the potential to incite real-world violence.
The “U-lock” mentality was on display in some of the rejoicing and Schadenfreude on Chinese social media after a destructive magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck western Japan on New Year’s Day of this year. Some nationalist commenters even claimed that the earthquake was “retribution” for past Japanese transgressions, from the conquest of Asia during WWII, up to and including last September’s initial release of treated nuclear wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Just a week after the earthquake came the Nanning Metro “rising sun/folding fan” flap, set in motion by a nationalistic Douyin vlogger who complained that a colorful new advertisement on the Nanning metro system resembled the controversial former “rising sun” flag of the Imperial Japanese Army. Nanning Metro quickly backed down, deleting the offending imagery and promising to improve its oversight of future advertising, but a look at the entirety of the advertisement revealed that the image was not a Japanese rising sun at all, but a traditional Chinese folding fan. Some online observers chalked the incident up to nationalist trolls attempting to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment through deliberate misrepresentation or intentional misdirection (指鹿为马, zhǐlùwéimǎ, literally “pointing at a deer and calling it a horse.”) Others characterized it as an example of “porcelain bumping” (碰瓷, pèngcí)—in other words, creating a sham scenario to fool the unwary and advance one’s own agenda. (The term was coined, noted David Bandurski, “to describe a technique used by fraudsters who would wait with delicate porcelain vessels outside busy markets and demand payment when these shattered, ostensibly due to the carelessness of others.”) Continue reading