Last Monday, Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi canceled a scheduled meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi under the pretense that she had "important and urgent business" back home. Upon her return, Beijing released the true reason for the diplomatic snub, declaring Koizumi's intention to visit the Yasukuni shrine as the real cause.
Yasukuni shrine is a Shinto temple that symbolically houses over 2.4 million of Japan's war dead. China and other Asian countries protest Koizumi's visits to the shrine because 14 Class-A war criminals are among those enshrined. They view his visits as a glorification of Japan's past atrocities and emblematic of its refusal to face up to history. Koizumi, conversely, claims that his visits reaffirm Japan's commitment to peace.
In its recall of Wu, Beijing is playing the moral trump card, portraying itself as the victim by keeping alive the memory of Japan's invasion of Asia in the 1930s. In contrast to last month's anti-Japan demonstrations sparked by the approval of Japanese textbooks that allegedly gloss over Japan's wartime atrocities, however, this act is unlikely to elicit an apology from Koizumi.
For last month, in response to the attacks on the Japanese embassy and consulates, he dispelled the popular myth that Japan refuses to apologize for its wartime past by offering an expression of remorse at a conference in Jakarta.
At the conference, the Chinese President Hu Jintao brusquely responded to Mr. Koizumi's apology, giving Koizumi the advice that Japan should show its remorse not through words, but through concrete action, to truly placate the Chinese people.
Mr. Hu glosses over history himself with this statement, as he seems to be forgetting all that Japan has already done in this respect. Japan has provided aid worth over $29 billion to China in the last 25 years, which has played an integral role in fueling China's economic surge and is considered by many an unofficial form of war reparations. And in contrast to the mantra of the Communist party, 99.8 percent of Japanese history textbooks describe in detail the atrocities Japanese soldiers committed in Asia, including the use of native women as sex slaves and the "Rape of Nanking." The textbooks that fueled the recent split in Sino-Japanese relations are used by only 18 junior high schools -- out of 11,102 junior highs in all of Japan. The books are written by a right-wing group whose ideas are far out of touch with the Japanese mainstream.
If any country needs textbook reform, it is China. While Chinese officials harp on the content of an infinitesimal number of Japanese junior high text books, 100 percent of their own textbooks neglect to mention the 1989 democracy movement (read: Tiananmen Square), not to mention the 30 million who died as a result of Mao's misguided policies. These textbooks refer to Japanese as "Jap bandits" -- all the while glorifying the Communist Party that saved China from the Japanese imperialists to heighten a sense of national victimhood.
The fact that the majority of the participants in last month's protests were college students shows that anti-Japan fervor is catching on among the younger generation. For the sake of future peaceful relations, China's Communist Party must stop encouraging anti-Japan sentiment in its education system.
China's withdrawal of Wu will likely only strengthen Koizumi's resolution to visit Yasukuni. Now more so than ever, he may come to view his visits as a necessary act to preserve his nation's dignity. The Japanese public is by no means amused either. A survey conducted by The Daily Yomiuri found that 92 percent of respondents disapprove of China's behavior.
Japan's national pride has been damaged, so there is now a good chance that the populace's cautious tolerance of Koizumi's visits will be replaced with fervent approval -- a scenario that can only further destabilize bilateral relations.
Beijing made a serious miscalculation when it decided to cut Wu's visit short. Standing up the Prime Minister of another nation is not good diplomacy, especially when that Prime Minister is Junichiro Koizumi, a leader well known for refusing to back down in the face of opposition.
It is, admittedly, a bit simplistic and naive to believe that World War II textbooks and Yasukuni are the only issues that are keeping tensions running so high. Of more essential concern are the recent feuds over the ownership of East China Sea islands and Japan's bid to gain a permanent seat on the Security Council. A general uneasiness concerning the power struggle in the region looms in the background as well. China's angry warning to Japan to stay out of its internal affairs after Japan, along with the United States, issued a statement hoping for a "peaceful resolution" in the Taiwan Strait, seems to confirm that something much greater is at stake.
With bilateral trade flows exceeding $170 billion and the stability of an already volatile region on the line, the two countries cannot afford this recent collapse in ties. They must separate the essential issues from the negligible ones. To accomplish this, however, China must stop dwelling on what happened 70 years ago.
Japan has shown remorse for its past misdeeds through both words and actions. There certainly are areas where Japan could do more to improve relations, but there is much more China can do on its part.
Japan has taken responsibility for its past; now it is China's turn to take responsibility for the future.
