China’s leaders fan antipathy towards Japan

BEIJING — By administrative order, dramas about resisting the Japanese wartime enemy will fill Chinese television channels this week as China celebrates — including with a massive military parade — the victory over Japan 70 years ago.

Combined with pervasive patriotic education that goes to great lengths in detailing Japanese atrocities, the order on programming from Sept 1 to 5 ensures that the Chinese public — generation after generation — always remembers the country’s past humiliation as well as the bitter, but valiant efforts to resist the Japanese.

“We are reminded of the war against Japan so constantly that I have developed an inherent antipathy towards Japan,” said a 26-year-old teacher from the north-eastern city of Dalian, Ms Cong Yuting.

Anti-Japanese sentiments in China are never far from the surface and have broken out in the open when tensions between Beijing and Tokyo fly high, while Chinese visit Japan in droves, buy Japanese products and embrace Japanese anime and fashion.

Why so much anger, after so much time? It is complicated. Japan’s apologies — perceived to be less than wholehearted — and its leaders’ ambiguous stances are often blamed. Recent moves by Japanese leaders to change the country’s Constitution to allow Japan’s military a greater role have added to China’s perception of Japan as militaristic and unrepentant.

But Beijing’s propaganda machine also has been a factor, overshadowing in many Chinese minds the fact that for more than a half-century after the war, Japan has been one of the world’s more pacifist countries, not to mention generous to China with aid, especially infrastructure loans in past decades. “Constant brainwashing since day one in the education and mass media systems has played a key role in building and keeping alive these strong anti-Japanese sentiments,” said Professor Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University who teaches Government and International Studies. “Larger segments of the Chinese society seem to really believe that the Japanese are still very militarist and nationalistic.”

Patriotic education is mandated in Chinese schools, and students often go on field trips to sites highlighting atrocities of the Japanese invaders.

The propaganda is intended to strengthen one-party rule, enlist solidarity against a common external bogeyman and distract the public from thorny domestic issues, Prof Cabestan said. “The deepening economic difficulties have contributed and will contribute to intensifying the magnitude and decibels of the current anti-Japanese propaganda.”

However, some Chinese scholars insist that it is Japan’s failure to adequately apologise for its brutal colonisation of much of China starting in 1930s and its wartime brutality that is the core reason for continued anti-Japanese sentiments.

“How can the victim have closure when the perpetuator has not expressed genuine remorse?” said the director of the East Asia Studies Center at Beijing-based Renmin University, Professor Huang Dahui. He added that the Chinese are not inherently anti-Japanese, and that their nationalism is only triggered when China is provoked. “It’s only a response.”

The Chinese government has ordered a flood of TV programmes, films, variety shows, books and special events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the war victory against Japan — usually playing up the role of Communist troops — while banning broadcasters from airing entertainment programmes in the first five days of September.

The culmination of events comes on Thursday when more than 10,000 troops — mostly Chinese but with contingents from Russia, Mongolia and a few other countries — will march through central Beijing on Sept 3.

But, as widely expected, leaders from major Western powers will be absent from the Sept 3 commemoration. The occasion is perceived as an event to showcase China’s growing military power amid its increasingly assertive tone in territorial disputes in the South and East China seas, and put pressure on Japan over its wartime actions. Some critics have described it as an attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to reinforce its legitimacy.

Two weeks ago, it was reported that South Korean President Park Geun-hye accepted Beijing’s invitation to attend the celebrations, although Seoul has yet to indicate whether she will attend the military parade.

Participation at the parade is considered problematic as many nations, including the United Kingdom, have recently criticised China’s aggressive military moves in the seas on its periphery. These include the building of new, militarily significant islands in the disputed South China Sea, which has unsettled other claimants such as Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. There are also concerns by nation beyond the region, including the United States, on efforts by China to curtail the freedom of navigation.

Last week, a top Japanese government spokesman said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided not to visit China around the time of the parade, despite the fact that Mr Abe had considered holding talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping before or after Sept 3. Mr Abe decided not to attend partly as he did not want to give the international community the impression that Japan has accepted China’s expansion of military presence in regional waters, said Japanese officials.

Ms Cong — the schoolteacher — now lives in Japan after having followed her husband to Tokyo on a job assignment. She teaches Japanese how to speak Chinese and has started to see the Japanese as disinterested in politics. Asked if China has gone overboard in constantly propagating war history, Ms Cong paused and said: “It’s hard to say. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If we don’t do it, those born in the 1990s, 2000s or even those in 2010s won’t know this part of history.” AGENCIES