A new plastic model for a Japan Maritime Force escort vessel is raising eyebrows in China. The model’s box art seems to feature the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning engulfed in flames and sinking. Japanese fighter jets fly overhead.
Originally a Soviet carrier, the Liaoning is known for its curved incline to, as South China Morning Post explains, “launch” aircraft from its deck. This is different from US Navy aircraft carriers, which use a catapult-assisted system.
The model carries the words “Operation Senkaku”, which are a set of islands that both China and Japan are claiming as their own.
Online in China, people have been quick to point out that the sinking aircraft carrier looks like the Liaoning. Xinhua, one of China’s largest news sources, is even covering the plastic model, wondering why it mocks the Chinese navy. The reason, apparently, was that the Japanese navy has never lost to China or something to that effect.
However, online in Japan, people seemed to think it was a silly thing to get upset over, noting that it was just box art for a plastic model aimed at the military model maker niche. Some even pointed out that this model company in particular often has provocative box art and plastic models. Others said this was tame compared to all the hyper violent anti-Japanese dramas on Chinese TV.
With this newfound attention, some even pointed out that this model was headed for big sales. Everything according to keikaku, no doubt.
The Hyuga 1/700 scale model was released this past May. It’s priced at around US$30.
ヘリコプター搭載護衛艦 ひゅうが 離島防衛作戦 (プラモデル) [Hobby Stock]
海自の護衛艦「ひゅうが」が中国空母を撃沈！？どこまでも中国海軍を馬鹿にする日本人―中国メディア [Xinhua]
Picture: Fuwarin
Comments
9 responses to “Japanese Plastic Model Trolls The Chinese Military”
Eh. This sort of chest-thumping nationalism is all for show. Trade between the countries is worth billions. Sure, there are natural resources in the ocean around the islands (which is what the fight is really about – the islands themselves are worthless to both countries), but with the huge discoveries of oil and gas deposits in the US rocky mountains, South America, the Arctic and even in China itself, that won’t be so much of an issue. Neither side want war or are willing to risk war over a few rocky islands.
And as others have pointed out, it’s not like the Chinese don’t engage in this sort of stuff as well. Chinese people are just as capable of racism as any other group of people – I would know, since half of my relatives are chinese…. and they often say less than pleasant things about the white half of my family. And vice versa for that matter.
It’s completely childish box art, but if anyone is genuinely outraged over box art, then they are childish themselves.
As a white Aussie with a completely mixed mongrel lineage, it was pretty eye-opening to me to travel in Asia.
I’ve experience anti-Asian racism every now and then – usually reading the news to hear about some idiot on a bus or train starts yelling about ‘go home’ or similar, and we condemn them as the assholes they are, and think it’s a Oz vs Asia thing and get really embarrassed about it… but then you go overseas, and wow.
SO much racism. We’re amateurs at it by comparison.
China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, India… man do they have people who hate each other and aren’t anywhere NEAR as afraid to say it publicly as folks are here.
Indeed.. the hate of the Japanese by Chinese runs very deep.. even for the general population, not just “politics”..
If you wind the clock back in Australia 20 to 30 years, there was an amount of hate towards Japan because there was still a lot of people who fought them in the war. I felt this sentiment around me as I was growing up.. not in my immediate family but in the wider community most definitely.
Think about what it would be like if Australia was one of the countries that Japan had invaded.. slaughtered, raped, massacred whole villages and towns and so on.. there would still be a deep resentment to this day, I guarantee it.
I dont understand the chinese….the Myth that the Japanese “slaughtered, raped, massacred” the chinese is nauseating….If you look at their history books being used in communist china schools , their so-called historians are all revisionists of their own history…..they blame other nations for their “100 years of humilitation” without blaming their own – the corrupt Qing dynasty who sold off its own people.
True or not, this is what the Chinese people believe. Your anti-Chinese propaganda is irrelevant in this case.
You can be sure those atrocities were truthful. There are also western sources because there were also western witness and victims.
Lolololol. love it
I bet it was “Made in China”
Everyone seems to be forgetting a model company made this box art, buy a luftwaffe model and it will show a spitfire being shot down, buy a stuart tank model and it will be rolling over a nazi position, who cares?
True dat. If you’re going to show illustrations of a military vehicle in combat, it’d make sense to depict actually plausible opponents.
Although, it’d be pretty awkward if we showed modern vehicles in depictions of plausible combat… US vehicles firing on Canadians, PMC-branded vehicles firing on civilians, sophisticated modern vehicles massacring guerrilla infantry, Australian Blackhawks crashing into each other… Despite being the logical choice, going for the modern angle on things which are currently very sensitive is still a bit of a facepalm move.
The links to the anti-Japanese stuff clearly show that China can’t rightly call foul without getting the finger pointed right back, but an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
…Except the last guy. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.