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Politics : War

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To: goldsnow who wrote (2228)7/9/2001 4:07:27 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER  Read Replies (2) of 23908
 
Re: Naturally Diaspora Jews have far greater stake in Israel survival (China "survival" is not an issue, is it <ggg>)

Indeed China's survival is not an issue for the forseeable future... Besides, although the Chinese were outrageously persecuted by the Japanese military during WWII, they don't sermonize the whole of humankind with "Holocaust" or the uniqueness of the Chinese's history... They were not granted a Nuremberg show-trial in the aftermath of WWII and yet, they didn't ask emperor Akihito of Japan to pay homage to some Yad Vashem of their own... (*)

At least, the fact that the Chinese people are not obsessed with their survival makes for healthier, matter-of-fact relationships with other countries/peoples. The Chinese can't hide the true motives of their political strategies behind a smoke screen of anti-Chinese scapegoating...

(*) NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, "Burying the Past: War Guilt Haunts Japan," New York Times, November 30, 1998

TOKYO -- Just last month, Japan had seemed to be making major progress in laying World War II to rest, forthrightly apologizing to South Koreans for its behavior and receiving something of an absolution from the visiting Korean president.

Then President Jiang Zemin of China arrived on the first visit ever by a Chinese head of state and asked for a similar apology. And suddenly, like a forgotten old jack-in-the-box, history leaped out of the past to roil the present and future.

Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi offered Jiang the traditional welcome gift -- a statement of "deep remorse" for Japan's war-time conduct -- but Jiang wanted an actual formal written apology. And Japan refused.
[...]

To Chinese, Japan's reluctance to apologize formally suggests a dark ambivalence about one of the bloodiest invasions in human history. Many Chinese are honestly fearful of Japan's long-run intentions, and some passionately warn Americans not to be fooled by a Japan that they believe is itching to rise up in arms again. Chinese are outraged when Japanese officials periodically suggest that the Rape of Nanking -- in which Japanese troops massacred as many as 200,000 Chinese in 1937 -- was much ado about nothing or that Japan was not an aggressor in the war.

mtholyoke.edu
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