A Japanese boy was stabbed on his way to school in China on Sept. 18. That’s the date, in 1931, when Japan invaded China.

 9月18日，一名日本男孩在中国上学的路上被刺伤。1931年9月18日是日本侵华开始的日子。

The child, who was 10 years old, was pronounced dead the next morning. The police arrested a 44-year-old man at the scene who they said had confessed to the attack. Japan’s leaders demanded answers. The Chinese government, calling the attack an “isolated incident,” told Japan to calm down and stop “politicizing” the killing.

 第二天早上，这名10岁的孩子被宣布死亡。警方在现场逮捕了一名44岁的男子，称其对袭击事件供认不讳。日本领导人要求得到答案。中国政府称这次袭击是一个“孤立事件”，要求日本冷静下来，停止将这起事件“政治化”。

Some Chinese people believe the boy was a victim of surging anti-Japanese sentiment fueled by China’s government with a virulent nationalism that is taught in schools and reflected online and in state media.

 一些中国人认为，这名男孩是反日情绪的受害者。中国政府在学校里教授有害的民族主义思想，并通过网络和国家媒体反映出来，从而煽动了反日情绪高涨。

The evening the boy died, more than 50 Chinese attended a candlelight vigil in Tokyo and issued a statement: “The longstanding extreme nationalism and anti-Japanese education in China have misled some people’s perception of Japan, enabling ignorance and wrongdoing. We are committed to changing this troubling situation.”

 男孩死亡当晚，50多名中国人在东京参加了烛光守夜活动，并发表声明：“中国长期以来盛行的极端民族主义及仇恨教育，遮蔽了一部分人对日本的认知，甚至放纵了蒙昧与罪恶。我们也将致力于改变这种令人不安的现况。”

Then, a week after his death, young activists, mostly in China but also some outside the country, started a memorial campaign. According to Chinese folklore, the souls of the deceased come back to visit their families after seven days before leaving for heaven.

然后，在他去世一周后，年轻的活动人士（主要在中国，也有一些在国外）发起了纪念活动。中国的民间习俗认为，死者的灵魂会在七天后回来探望家人，然后前往天国。

“As Chinese citizens, we do not wish to grow up in a land of hatred,” the activists said in a statement co-signed by more than 200 people.

“作为中国公民，我们不希望在仇恨的土地上成长，”活动人士在一份有200多人共同签署的声明中说。

I interviewed many Chinese who were outraged at what they said was increasing xenophobic indoctrination. Some were in Japan or in the United States, but others were in China, where even public grief at times like these could be seen as dissent. They said that hating the Japanese had become a politically correct view to hold in China.

我采访了许多中国人，他们说排外思想的灌输越来越多，对此他们感到愤怒。这些人有的身在日本或美国，有的在中国，而在中国，这种时候即使是公开的悲痛也会被视为异议。他们说，在中国，仇恨日本人已经成为一种政治正确。

They asked themselves: Were they enablers of hate if they remained silent? What could they do to prevent future tragedies? They decided that they had to speak out; inaction would be cowardice.

他们问自己：保持沉默是否会助长仇恨？他们能做些什么来防止未来的悲剧？他们决定必须大声疾呼；不作为就是一种怯懦。

So they laid flowers at the gate of the boy’s school in Shenzhen in southern China. They held small memorial services, some online and some in person. They co-signed statements with their real names and wrote social media articles and posts even though they knew the censors and the nationalist mobs would lash out at them.

于是，他们到男孩在中国南方城市深圳的学校门口献花。他们举行小型追悼会，有的在网上，有的是在线下。他们用真名共同签署声明，在社交媒体上发表文章和帖子，尽管他们知道，审查员和民族主义暴徒会猛烈抨击他们。

“Some friends said to us, ‘Don’t write, don’t speak out, because you’ll get attacked,’” two Beijing law professors wrote on social media. “But that child has died. If we stay silent, we are all complicit.”

 “有朋友说，别写，别发声——因为会被骂，”两名北京的法学教授在社交媒体上写道。“那孩子都死了——再不发声，我们都是共谋。”

“Silence, avoidance and turning a blind eye are all forms of indulgence in violence and show disregard for the deceased,” they wrote.

“噤声、沉默和回避都是对暴力的放纵，都是对逝者的漠视，”他们写道。

It’s hard to tell how many Chinese feel this way. But I have followed nationalism in China closely for years, through interviews and by studying what is said online. The anger people feel at the hatred education is more palpable now than anytime since China’s leader, Xi Jinping, put the country in an ideological straitjacket made of nationalism more than a decade ago.

很难说有多少中国人有这种感觉。但多年来，通过采访和研究网上的言论，我一直密切关注中国的民族主义。自十多年前中国领导人习近平将中国置于民族主义的意识形态束缚之下以来，如今，人们对仇恨教育的愤怒比以往任何时候都要强烈。

深圳，人们在遇害男孩学校门口献花。

More than 200 people signed the two statements in their real names, a defiant act because China’s authorities are reflexively opposed to such organized actions.

超过200人实名在这两份声明中签名，这是一种挑衅行为，因为中国当局本能地反对这种有组织的行动。

A 24-year-old woman who signed a statement told me that she had been summoned by two state security officers and questioned for two hours. She said they had told her that the statement was “a deliberate act organized by anti-China forces, intending to stir up trouble and undermine the stability of Chinese society.”

一名签署了声明的24岁女子告诉我，她被两名国家安全官员传唤，并被审问了两个小时。她说，他们告诉她，该声明是“反华势力蓄意组织的行为，意图挑起事端，破坏中国社会的稳定”。

The officers didn’t want to talk about the boy, she said. They cared only about who organized the statement and why anyone would sign it. “They showed zero respect for a life that was lost,” she said.

她说，警官们不想谈论那个男孩。他们只关心谁组织了这份声明，以及为什么会有人签署。“他们对逝去的生命毫无尊重，”她说。

The officers’ attitude wasn’t surprising. Anti-Japanese content populates all types of media in China. A former Japanese ambassador told a Japanese newspaper that he had asked the Chinese authorities to take down online misinformation to no effect. The videos he was concerned about depicted Japanese schools in China as training grounds for future spies or showed fictional dramas of ordinary Chinese beating up Japanese.

 警察的态度并不令人惊讶。反日内容充斥着中国的各种媒体。一位前日本大使告诉一家日本报纸，他曾要求中国当局删除网上的错误信息，但没有任何效果。令他感到担心的视频将中国的日本人学校描述为未来间谍的训练基地，或者展示了普通中国人殴打日本人的虚构戏剧。

Kuaishou, a major Chinese short video platform, punished more than 90 accounts that it said had spread harmful information and incited China-Japan antagonism. A former employee of another short video site said anti-Japanese content was popular because it attracted traffic and was not usually censored by the government.

 中国主要短视频平台快手对90多个传播有害信息、煽动中日对立的账号进行了处罚。另一家短视频网站的前雇员表示，反日内容很受欢迎，因为它吸引流量，而且通常不会受到政府的审查。

Chinese people are repeatedly told that they should hate Japanese, Americans, Hong Kong democracy protesters, pro-independence Taiwanese and any critics of the Chinese government. It’s the only correct thing to do.

中国人被反复告知，他们应该憎恨日本人、美国人、香港民主抗议者、支持独立的台湾人以及任何批评中国政府的人。这是唯一正确的做法。

A migrant worker told me in an interview last year that his 11-year-old son had been offended when he explained the tensions between China and Taiwan. His son accused him of not being a good Chinese. He had been taught at school that Taiwan was part of China. For him, it was the one and only correct answer.

一名农民工在去年的一次采访中告诉我，当他解释大陆和台湾之间的紧张关系时，他11岁的儿子感到被冒犯了。他的儿子指责他不是一个好中国人。他在学校被教导台湾是中国的一部分。对他来说，这是唯一正确的答案。

A Chinese woman who has been living in Europe for years wrote to me saying she didn’t dare to talk about the Japanese boy’s death with her father. “I’m terrified of hearing my father say, ‘He deserved it.’ If he does, I might have a nervous breakdown,” she wrote. “But this seems almost inevitable if nationalist sentiments continue to be stoked.”

一位在欧洲生活多年的中国女性写信给我说，她不敢和父亲谈论那个日本男孩的死亡。“我很害怕听到父亲说，‘活该。’如果他这么说，我可能会崩溃，”她写道。“但如果民族主义情绪继续被煽动，这好像几乎是不可避免的。”

In June, a middle-aged Chinese man attacked a Japanese mother and her son with a knife at a school bus stop in the eastern city of Suzhou. They were injured while the bus attendant, a Chinese woman, died trying to stop the man. Many people cheered the attack on social media — “They deserve it” and “Well done!” — while calling the Chinese woman “Traitor!”

 今年6月，一名中年中国男子在东部城市苏州的一个校车站持刀袭击了一名日本母亲和她的儿子。他们受了伤，而巴士乘务员，一名中国女性，在试图阻止该男子时身亡。许多人在社交媒体上为这次攻击欢呼——“他们活该”“干得好！”——同时称那名中国女子为“叛徒！”

The problem in China is how strictly the government controls speech, said Tomoko Ako, a sociologist focused on China at the University of Tokyo.

东京大学研究中国问题的社会学家阿古智子说，中国的问题在于政府对言论的严格控制。

“A government should allow many kinds of opinions, including those critical of hate speech,” she said. Professor Ako is equally critical of online speeches in Japan that make sweeping statements about the Chinese people.

“一个政府应该允许多种意见，包括那些批评仇恨言论的意见，”她说。阿古智子同样批评日本网上对中国人一概而论的言论。

After a major Japanese newspaper wrote about the candlelight vigil in Tokyo, some Japanese left harsh comments on Yahoo Japan. “If you truly want to mourn, then denounce the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” one commenter wrote. “If you can’t do that, it’s just a gesture.”

日本一家主要报纸报道了东京的烛光守夜活动后，一些日本人在雅虎日本上留下了严厉的评论。“如果你真的想哀悼，那就谴责中国政府和中国共产党，”一位评论者写道。“如果做不到，那就只是一种姿态。”

That’s the dilemma that independent-minded Chinese face. At home, the powerful authoritarian state makes their efforts to push back against extreme nationalism seem negligible. A mantis trying to stop a chariot is the apt Chinese expression. Outside China, much of the world tends to look at the country and its people with suspicion.

这就是有独立思想的中国人所面临的困境。在国内，强大的威权国家让他们反击极端民族主义的努力显得微不足道。“螳臂当车”是一个恰如其分的说法。在中国之外，世界上很多国家都倾向于用怀疑的眼光看待这个国家和它的人民。

The day after the death of the Japanese boy, a letter that appeared to be from his father circulated on China’s internet. He said he and his wife, who is Chinese, felt that they and their son belonged to both countries.

 在日本男孩死后的第二天，一封似乎来自他父亲的信在中国互联网上流传。他说，他和他的中国妻子觉得他们和他们的儿子属于中日两个国家。

“We will not hate China, and likewise, we will not hold hatred for Japan,” the father wrote. “My only wish is that such tragedies never happen again.”

“我们不会憎恨中国，同样，我们也不会惜恨日本，”这位父亲写道。“我唯一的愿望就是，这样的悲剧不再重演。”

Many people shared the letter on social media, almost as a protest. Then it disappeared completely, something that only the top government censor could have ordered.

许多人在社交媒体上分享了这封信，几乎是作为一种抗议。后来信就完全消失了，这是只有最高政府审查者才能下令做的事。