Rivalry Fuels Anti - Japan Protests in ChinaBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 11, 2005
Filed at 5:56 p.m. ET
BEIJING (AP) -- Last year it was submarines and shrines. Now it's textbooks and a seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Violent weekend protests in which Chinese stoned the Japanese Embassy are just the latest eruption in a decades-old series of disputes rooted in wartime history but fueled by modern rivalry, as the two sides jostle for Asian dominance.
On Monday, Tokyo called on Beijing to protect Japanese citizens in China and appealed for dialogue to put an end to the violence.
The countries are bound together by tens of billions of dollars in trade, aid and investment, but political relations are often strained and never warm.
The latest sources of displeasure: New Japanese textbooks that critics say gloss over wartime atrocities, and Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- a goal China is in a position to block.
The outcome could influence the course of Japanese-Chinese relations at a time of surging Chinese growth and influence -- and mounting unease at Tokyo's diplomatic and military ambitions.
``Japan-China ties have entered a stage at which improving relations will be very difficult,'' said Hidenori Ijiri, a professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
``There are several very intricately intertwined reasons why relations have deteriorated,'' he said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other politicians have added to tensions by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to war dead including convicted war criminals.
Many Chinese are bitter about the invasion and insist that Tokyo has never shown adequate contrition for a war in which China says as many as 30 million of its people died.
More recently, competing claims to territory in the East China Sea and China's exploration for gas under the sea floor near Okinawa have aggravated tensions. Last year, a Chinese submarine entered Japanese waters. Tokyo demanded and said it received an apology.
In China's northeast, anger simmers over chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese forces. Japan and China are in the midst of a marathon joint effort to clear away the weapons, but canisters of poison gas are periodically unearthed by accident, causing deaths and injuries that re-ignite public fury.
The Chinese government also keeps alive resentment of Japan through its own schoolbooks and state media.
Ijiri, the Japanese academic, said the government could be stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment to unite China's public as President Hu Jintao solidifies power after taking over from Jiang Zemin.
``The government needs a scapegoat and Japan is the easiest to turn into a scapegoat,'' he said.
The protest Saturday was the biggest in Beijing since 1999, when the U.S. Embassy was besieged after NATO warplanes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo.
Thousands of Chinese protesters marched through the Chinese capital, shouting slogans and throwing rocks, bottles and eggs at the Japanese Embassy. One group burned a Japanese flag.
``China's economy needs to grow even bigger so Japan won't be able to push us around ever again,'' said protester Huang Liyi, a 22-year-old chemist at the protest.
On Saturday night, the Japanese Embassy said two Japanese students were assaulted in Shanghai. ``I ask that China do all it can to prevent a recurrence,'' Koizumi said Monday.
A week earlier, demonstrators in the southwestern city of Chengdu broke windows at a Japanese-owned department store.
China said the responsibility lay with Japan to improve relations.
Japan should adopt an ``earnest attitude and appropriate ways to deal with ... the feelings of the Chinese people,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Sunday, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
China won't say whether it will oppose a permanent Security Council seat for Japan, which carries with it power to veto U.N. actions.
But as the only Asian nation among the current five permanent members, China is unlikely to want to give up that exclusive status and boost its rival's influence in the world body.
The new Japanese history textbooks, written by nationalist scholars, were approved by Japan's Education Ministry for use in schools beginning in April 2006. Critics say they downplay offenses by the Japanese military, including mass sex slavery of Asian women.
According to a survey released by the Chinese government's Xinhua News Agency, 96 percent of 1,000 people questioned in major Chinese cities condemned the books.
``Such action severely hurt the Chinese people's feelings,'' Xinhua said, ``and constituted an insult to the Chinese people.''
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@ Mari's wedding party in May with DC girls~
i think i will start posting more pictures up now (actually i should first start posting entries...) 
lots of changes around me, but all for the better... my brother moving out to nyc, lots of transitions at work, friends getting married, friends getting engaged, friend getting pregnant (!!)... 
but im excited since the people in my dept seem very nice. they invited me to their hanami party this past weekend, where i spent most of the time playing with one of my colleagues' 20month year old son. 
he made me want children. 
anyway, ill post some recent pix up next time 
