Reason Number 18. The Mirror of Japan - The War of Apology

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 35
“Despite the signing of the 1972 ‘Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China’ which normalized relations between the two countries, for China, the ‘Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression,’ as the China-Japan war of 1937 to 1945 is called in China, has never truly come to an emotional closure. When China looks in the mirror of Japan, it sees an enemy, a country with which it is still fighting a war of apology.

And the one constant refrain of this emotional war is that Japan must ‘truthfully face up to history.’ The youth of Japan are declared ignorant about the need for reflection, and the youth of China therefore reflect only hatred.

How deep Chinese hatred of Japan goes was made clear in an editorial in People’s Daily in June 2007. Li Xuejiang, the newspaper’s chief resident reporter in the US, wrote that “The massacre of the Jews by the German Nazis during WWII was a trampling upon the human justice, and the issue about ‘sex slaves’ is an identical one and has no reason whatsoever to make it fade or weaken” [sic].

To equate one of the greatest tragedies in all human history – the Holocaust – with sex slavery, which, though a grave crime, is one that has been committed in almost every war ever fought – is simply obscene, and a deep insult to all Jewish people as well as many other nationals who suffered the horrors of the gas.

In making a link between the Japanese nation of today with Nazi Germany of the past, China simply distorts history and keeps hatred alive.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Ah, Japan. The one thing, above even Tibet and Xinjiang, which is guaranteed to provoke anger and misunderstanding from China.

Japan shows that just like many Chinese people don’t really understand the truth inside China, they don’t understand the truth outside China either.

I’ve written about Japan before, two years ago. In the time since then there has been a tiny glimmer recognition within the Communist Party that the policy it has held ever since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, of blaming Japan for everything, may be unwise. The force of nationalism, once created, is hard to kill. But this is a faint spark indeed, for Japan remains a whipping boy too tempting to ignore. And so the drumbeat of hate for Japan continues to sound, creating an endless supply of angry Chinese nationalists.

I really don’t think people who have never visited China have any understanding of just how deep this hatred runs. It’s not present in all people, not by a long way. But it’s certainly a significant part of life in China today.

The hatred that wells out of China in response to Japan is an ugly thing. I’ve met it in people who are otherwise calm and rational, and in people who are highly educated.

But one incident more than any other sticks in my mind.

It took place, naturally, in the classroom, for it is in the classroom that I have really learned the mind of modern China. It was a class of younger students, around 17 to 19 years old, and at the time I was working for one of the many private language schools in Shanghai rather than a university. A few of the students were keen to work, but most were rather lazy– they were that new breed of young Chinese student, the idle rich. Offspring of newly-wealthy parents, they had never had to want for anything, never had to do much work.

Most of them were too idle, too lazy, to get a good score in the all-important college entrance exam, and so their parents had sent them here to brush up on English before paying hefty amounts of money to have them educated overseas. For most of them, the outlay would have been a waste of time, since for sure these guys would not work any harder abroad than at home – but as few had the gumption to work hard enough to learn the language skills, it was a moot point. They’d never get the visa to leave China.

Anyhow, there was one chap, a rather conceited fellow, who spend most of the class slumped on the table asleep (though of course that could have just been because I was a shit teacher.) Generally I don’t let students do this – I give ‘em the old ‘If you want to be in my class, you have to pay attention’ routine. But it hadn’t worked with him.

One session, I got to talking about Japan, and attitudes in China to that nation. This particular student was, as usual, slumped on his desk. I asked the student next to him, ‘What do you think of Japan?’

This question obviously penetrated the fog of the sleeping guy’s oblivion, for he sat bolt upright, stated ‘I hate Japan. We should kill all Japanese. I want to kill them!’

And, that said, he settled his head back into his folded arms and slept out the rest of the lesson.

That’s what I think of when I think of China and Japan. Because while you can’t extrapolate a whole nation from a single individual, every individual carries something of the nation inside.

What Japan did to China was indeed a grave sin against humanity.

But often I think there are many young people in China who would love the chance to visit those same horrors on Japan.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 36
“Giving a speech in September 2005 to mark the 60th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War Two, Chinese President Hu Jintao said that ‘After the end of the war, many Japanese from all walks of life faced squarely the historical fact that Japanese militarists had launched the war of aggression against foreign countries and strongly denounced the atrocities Japanese aggressors had committed in China. Their conscience and courage are highly commendable.’

But the words do not stop there. Hu goes on to say that there are ‘…forces in Japan that have categorically denied the aggressive nature of the war Japan launched against China and the crimes it committed, and have tried their best to whitewash its militarist aggression and call back the spirit of those Class A war criminals who have been condemned by history.’

It is true that there are those in Japan who downplay or even extol its wartime past. Yet these are a minority voice, and a regrettable but unavoidable side-effect of living in a democratic nation. When citizens are allowed to voice their opinions freely, some of those opinions will be objectionable. But, short of direct hate speech, such freedoms must be honored. This is something China, in its War of Apology, and without democracy, simply cannot understand.

‘The past, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future,’ said Hu. ‘By emphasizing the need to always remember the past, we do not mean to continue the hatred. Instead, we want to draw lessons from history and be forward-looking. Only by remembering the past and drawing lessons from it can one avoid the repetition of historical tragedies.’

But in what must rank as one of the most breathtakingly false, mendacious and hypocritical statements ever issued by any world leader, Hu said ‘History has eloquently proved that only when it adheres to the leadership of the CPC and the socialist road with Chinese characteristics can the Chinese nation create a brighter future.’

Exhaustive and meticulous research by Professor R. J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii, suggests that between its founding in 1949 and 1987, the government of the People’s Republic of China was responsible for the death of more than 75 million of its own citizens.

75 million.

This is the leadership that, says Hu, history ‘eloquently’ proves leads to a ‘brighter future.’

The failings of the CPC are not open to inspection, like the failings of other governments in other powerful nations. To replace this inspection process, China showers blame on what it views at excesses from outside its borders.

Hatred should be based on facts, not half-truths, rumors and misinterpretations of historical conflict, now only teachable by history books written by the citizens of each country, each book containing prejudices the other country will never accept. Teaching children how they should act in future may be more valid than teaching them how they should be guided by historical mythology.”

What Japan did to China, China has done the peoples of its colonized territories. Don't forget - if you're on camera in China, make a 'T' for Tibet and an 'X' for Xinjiang.