Anti-Japanese protests happen from time to time in China, and China’s rulers generally welcome them as ways to mobilize popular opinion behind the Communist Party leadership and to distract attention from domestic problems like corruption, inequality and environmental degradation. But such protests are a double-edged sword because they underscore the legitimacy of protest itself.

In Han Han’s view, the anti-Japan protesters of the past month have been used. His blog post addresses his fellow citizens this way:

There are three roles on China’s stage today: master, lackey, and dog. Most of us switch between two of the three. (Which two? Well, you can hardly expect yourself to be the master, can you?) Normally what the master wants from the lackeys is craven docility, but right now he needs some yipping dogs. No problem! Because in a dog’s mind, no matter how the master treats you, when an outsider shows up it’s your job to guard the homestead. ...Deep inside, our leaders aren’t really angry. They just feel emasculated. And so, in their view, we are supposed to feel emasculated, too. But who ever took to the streets shouting “I’ve been emasculated!”? That only makes things worse. During times when the leaders’ face is intact, they smack us in the mouth; when they lose face, we’re supposed to earn it back for them. How do we take this?

Han Han then addresses the government, this way:

Don’t tell me that you and I are equally hurt by these “motherland” issues. ... In our country the common people do not own one inch of the land; all the land, as you know, is rented from you. So from where I sit this issue resembles a tiff between my landlord and my neighbor over a tile that is lying on the ground. I know that the tile was blown off my landlord’s roof during a high wind, and also know that the landlord, who is afraid to fight the neighbor, has never dared to go fetch the tile. But what does that have to do with me, the tenant? Why should somebody with no land fight to get somebody else’s land back? Why should a tenant with no dignity fight for his landlord’s dignity? How much are people like that worth, per pound? How many would it take to add up to one pound?

At the end of his essays Han Han drops the allegorical mode and states plainly that “Protests against foreigners by people who are not allowed to protest at home are utterly worthless. They are nothing but a group dance.”

The authorities apparently do not dare to shut Han Han’s blog down. But they did erase this particular item, about 50 minutes after he posted it. Those 50 minutes, though, were enough to get it onto Chinese Twitter, where it was a hit all last week and from where it has spread around the world.