Japan-China Fight Over History Rooted in the Future

It's not just about history textbooks.

Anti-Japanese riots in China are not only due to enduring memories of Japanese imperial rule in the early 20th century, say online commentators, but also stem from concerns about the future ambitions of both countries' governments.

"The main reason for the current round of anti-Japanese sentiment in China is Tokyo's campaign to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a role that would challenge China's supremacy in Asian leadership," wrote columnist Steve Vines in The Standard, a financial daily in Hong Kong.

"What is happening has more to do with the geopolitics of 2005 than about the Nanjing Massacre of 1937," he wrote. New texts approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education allegedly downplay the atrocities committed against hundreds of thousands of Chinese men and women following the Japanese invasion of the city.

The China Post in Taiwan says the "the flames of this resentment" have been fueled by "Japan's approval of a new history textbook, its constant territorial disputes with neighboring countries, its bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat and annual visits by senior political figures to a Tokyo shrine honoring Japan's war dead."

But, in the view of the Chinese military, Japan's attitude about the past is the key to understanding its global aspirations.

"The crux of the Japanese textbook issue," says the People's Liberation Army Daily, "is in fact whether Japan can adopt a correct attitude toward its militarist aggressive history and whether Japan can educate its young generations with the correct outlook of history."

Commentators Sheng Xin and Sun Yulin wrote Monday that, "The Chinese people have not forgotten that Japan conducted frenzied aggression against and unbridled plunder in China for as long as half a century after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, inflicting extremely severe disasters on the Chinese people."

Japan's textbooks, Sheng and Sun said, show whether Japanese young people will "have a correct understanding of history" or will "form a wrong outlook of history." The books shed light on "whether the militarism is to be uprooted or to be revived" and on "the future direction of the development of Japan."

The conflict, according to most commentators, is deepening. A Sunday meeting between the countries' foreign ministers was an exercise in mutual incomprehension, according to news organizations in both countries.

The China Daily reported that Japan failed to own up to its historical crimes. In Japan, the Mainichi Daily News reported that the China "refuses to apologize for anti-Japanese violence."

Events have inflamed public opinion in both countries, said Keizo Nabeshima in the Japan Times. "A public opinion poll conducted by the [Japanese] Cabinet Office last year showed that the proportion of respondents feeling affinity toward China fell to 38 percent, down 10 points from the previous year. The ratio of those who claimed not to have any such sentiment jumped 10 points to 58 percent, indicating increasing anti-Chinese sentiment among the Japanese," Nabeshima wrote.

"Meanwhile, a poll published by a Chinese government think tank last year showed a mere 6 percent of the respondents feeling affinity toward Japan, while those without such feelings came to 54 percent. Of the latter group, 62 percent said Japan had not reflected satisfactorily on its past military aggression."

Even apolitical businessmen are getting worried, says the independent Asia Times.