links for 2007-06-22
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Qin made the remarks at a regular press conference on Thursday afternoon when asked to comment on the Japanese dietmen’s denial of the massacre
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China said Thursday that the fact of Japan’s claim that the death toll in the “Rape of Nanking” massacre had been grossly inflated was an affront to international justice and showed their lack of courage in facing historical facts.
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“In 1984, I interacted with 51 members who are part of the current 220-member visiting group,” Jia said yesterday. “And if you count the children of those who had visited China 23 years ago, the number would be nearly 80.”
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“This is a significant moment. Japanese guests are visiting China again after 23 years to breathe new life into their traditional friendship, because the year of 2007 marks the 35th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan relations,” said the pres
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live audience of about 300 at Asia Society, New York City voted 35% for the motion and 59% against at the conclusion of the debate.
links for 2007-06-21
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The members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party said there was no evidence to prove mass killings by Japanese soldiers in the captured Nationalist capital, then known as Nanking. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a
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The resolution on so-called “comfort women” will be brought up in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on June 26, a panel staffer said.
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Japan Focus -Who is Responsible? The Yomiuri Project and the Enduring Legacy of the Asia-Pacific WarTessa Morris-Suzuki
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Japan has become more willing to use its power, and more aware of changes in the external balance of power. It is rising, but how? As one Japanese liberal commented to me, “this is our third response to globalization. What can we contribute this time?
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It spoke out after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disclosed plans to focus on foreign exchange strategies threatening global financial stability.
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The dialogue, exchanges and cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have deepened in recent years, said China-ASEAN Association (CAA) President Gu Xiulian said on Wednesday.
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Business and trade ties between Japan and China are soaring while tense political relations are only slowly recovering from a five-year low under former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
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The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, said in a statement on its website that the IMF “should carry out its duties based on mutual understanding and respect”, especially for the views of developing countries.
Yasukuni in Context: Nationalism and History in Japan
Documents revealed in March that the Japanese government’s long-held position that it had nothing to do with the enshrinement of war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo wasn’t exactly, well, accurate. This week at Japan Focus, Akiko Takenaka has written a great update on these revelations. It’s published with an Asahi Shimbun editorial calling for the release of more documents and repeating its position that a secular memorial to war dead ought to be established—a position shared by an unlikely ally for the center-left daily, the center-right Yomiuri Shimbun. Japan Focus two years ago translated two editorials that represented an up-tick in momentum for that movement. It was significant to see the two largest newspapers in Japan (and in the world) agree for once on such a controversial issue.
I want to include an excerpt from Takenaka’s analysis, because it describes well why World War II reconciliation between Japan and its victims is so fraught. No single issue, not even Yasukuni, is the linchpin of tension over history.
Many, particularly international critics, have pointed out that the heart of the Yasukuni problem is the Japanese government’s glorification of its military past and reluctance to accept responsibility for its wartime deeds. State patronage of Yasukuni is intimately related to LDP efforts to revise the Constitution in order to strengthen Japan’s war-making powers. But simple removal of the physical structure of Yasukuni, or disenshrinement of the war criminals, will not resolve the Yasukuni problem. Let me explain. Many Japanese who are critical of the war and of Japanese war crimes, focus their criticisms on the shrine itself, including state involvement in the shrine, and the failure of the state to adequately provide apology and reparations to Asian victims of Japan’s wartime aggression and war crimes. In the process, like the new postwar generation of nationalists who currently lead the LDP, they fail to question the war responsibilities of the Japanese people, including their parents and grandparents – or, even themselves, for their reluctance to initiate a sincere dialogue on making amends. The ultimate solution to the problems associated with Yasukuni Shrine and crimes of war can only be resolved when both state and people accept responsibility and act to put the dark episodes of the war behind them through sincere apologies, reparations, and education of the next generations of Japanese.
The political hack in me wonders what kind of deal might be struck to satisfy some Japanese voters’ nationalist emotions while backing off of the rhetoric and actions that draw so much diplomatic criticism from China, South Korea, and other countries. If Japanese nationalists truly desire to make their nation a “normal country” in international affairs, perhaps they could lose some of the bravado displayed by implicit glorification of Japan’s aggressive past. Indeed, objectives such as gaining a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council might meet less opposition if, to paraphrase Chinese government statements in April 2005, Japan faced up to its history.
I’m not so naïve as to imagine such a compromise is a realistic possibility; nationalism in Japan, as anywhere, is not often so cold and calculated as to cede ground on issues of pride in favor of more concrete gains. And it’s not necessarily safe to assume China would stop opposing Japan in the UNSC example just because leaders shunned Yasukuni.
What emerges from this line of reasoning is the possibility that concrete political moves such as UNSC membership or Article 9 revision are fundamentally secondary to questions of national pride. Perhaps liberals in Japan could achieve some of their goals by wrapping pacifism in the flag. If only that could work in both Japan and the United States, we’d be in business.
links for 2007-06-18
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Officials in South Korea and the United States on Sunday welcomed a move by North Korea to invite the United Nations nuclear watchdog back to the Communist state for the first time in four and a half years to discuss shutting down the North’s main nuclear
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The recently declassified documents show that the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter applied heavy pressure on Taiwan to end its quest for sophisticated equipment that Washington feared would be used in the manufacture of a nuclear bomb.
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The funds, which the United States has charged are largely the proceeds of crime, were transferred out of Banco Delta Asia, a small family-owned bank in Macao, in the first step to have the money returned to the original account holders, the officials sai
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The legislation, which appeared likely to be opposed by the Bush administration, was offered by Senators Max Baucus, the Democrat who heads the Senate Finance Committee, and Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the panel, which oversees trade measu
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Proposals to set up a human rights committee which would review its policies around the world, specifically China, were also heavily defeated.
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June 11 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s Finance Minister Koji Omi and his Italian counterpart Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa agreed China’s currency should be more flexible, a Japanese Finance Ministry official said.
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BEIJING · China said Saturday that it had rejected a shipment of pistachios from the United States, saying it contained ants.
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TOKYO (AFP) – Taiwan’s former president Lee Teng-hui on Saturday fired a defiant shot at China during a visit to Japan, urging Tokyo to take a harder line in an emotive row over a war shrine.
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BEIJING – Turning the tables on the United States amid growing worries over dangerous Chinese products, Beijing said Friday some health supplements, raisins and pistachios imported from the U.S. failed to meet China’s safety standards and have been return
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HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (Reuters) – Japan and China emphasised their friendly relationship at a bilateral meeting on Friday, a day after Beijing had shown irritation with Tokyo for allowing a visit by a former Taiwanese president.
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Abe Invites China’s Hu to Japan to Improve Relations
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(HEILIGENDAMM) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo on Wednesday renewed his opposition to European Union moves to sell weapons to China during talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
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In the eyes of some scientists and public health experts it is a risky plan. They fear that mass treatments with artemisinin, particularly without associated measures to control the mosquitoes that carry the disease, could hasten the onset of resistance t
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China’s Rise and the Reorganization of the Asian Regional and World Economy
Posting Slowdown, California, Beijing
By way of apology for my recent lack of blogging, I have a little explaining to do. At this moment I am in transit between life as a think tank staffer in Washington, D.C., and a renewed status as a student. Later this month I will begin studying Mandarin Chinese in California, to continue in Beijing from late July onward. Blogging may continue to suffer during this series of travels. On the bright side, however, I will soon be able to add any insight I gain in China, where I will be in the full-time business of learning. Thanks, dear readers, for your interest. We should be back and better in no time.
Coming Around to Mann’s Book: A Valuable Polemic
After my initial reaction to James Mann’s China Fantasy, I was ready to be disappointed by the rest of the book. As it turns out, rhetorical excesses aside, the book is a valuable read for anyone interested in how the U.S. political world discusses China, especially those of us who discuss the U.S.–China relationship every day.
The crux of Mann’s criticisms of the U.S. discourse on China is this: He sees the discussion in the United States as centered around an assumption that more trade will inevitably bring more democracy to China. His core message is: maybe not. That’s it. The whole book is devoted to cutting down what Mann sees as a widely-held assumption.
I’m always in favor of tossing out rhetorical conventions that have no relation to reality, and I agree with Mann that, as far as trade leading to democracy, “maybe not” is an important possibility to consider. In fact I can’t imagine any transition to democracy coming about through means so simple as more trade with the United States and greater integration in the international community.
However, the book can be frustrating. In addition to certain logical problems when Mann attacks people he disagrees with (see my previous post), he has not set out to find evidence one way or another on the central question he says faces us. The book is, as advertised, purely about how people talk about China-U.S. relations, not about the relationship itself.
But that’s why it’s valuable to those who read and write about China and the United States. Whether you agree with his positions or not, many of the clichés of the field are laid bare. As Mann predicts, the 2008 Olympics will be venue for much discussion about China, and let’s hope journalists and governments give due consideration to what they say.
Perhaps another day I will have more to say about Mann’s online debate with David Lampton.
What Exactly Is Fair Trade? I Interview an Expert.
Today my newly-former employer publishes my interview with Fair Trade and international economics expert Jonathan Jacoby of the Center for American Progress. I always found myself wondering how exactly Fair Trade is put together, especially when confronting such things as a favorite coffee roaster Intelligentsia’s “Direct Trade” program, which claims to pay farmers even more than Fair Trade-certified sellers. About a month ago I interrogated Jonathan about how all this works, and here’s the product, after the jump.
