China turns up rhetoric on Japanese textbook issue

Asian Political News, May 21, 2001

BEIJING, May 17 Kyodo

China stepped up its attack on the Japanese government Thursday over its failure to show remorse for past aggression and to ''fix mistakes'' in a nationalist history textbook approved for middle school use.

Despite 137 revisions since an earlier draft, the textbook still ''contains many history-distorting problems'' and adopts a tone of propaganda in advocating Japan's past imperialism, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told a regular press conference.

''Instead of having any remorse for its historical aggression, the Japanese side has tried to further gloss over and beautify this historical aggression,'' Sun said. ''This kind of history book will have a serious misleading effect on the conception of history by Japanese youth,'' he warned.

He urged Japan to honor its stated commitments on the handling of ''historical questions'' and to ''seriously address the solemn position and demands of the Chinese side.''

''As long as this is not resolved, the Chinese side will insist on continued representations and talks'' on the issue, including during Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka's planned visit to Beijing to attend an Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) beginning May 24, Sun said.

His statements came one day after the Foreign Ministry delivered a memorandum to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing detailing specific objections to the text.

''Chinese historians have conducted careful research on the right-wing textbook and further confirmed that there is a series of serious fallacies,'' China's Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said on Thursday, paraphrasing an official from the Asian affairs section of Foreign Ministry who delivered the item.

The book ''attempts to shirk responsibility for Japan's invasion of China, beautifies colonial rule in Manchuria (northeast China), covers up historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre and attacks the just trials of Japanese war criminals by the Far Eastern International Martial Court,'' the People's Daily said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded Thursday by saying revisions were out of the question, though stating that China's criticisms would be treated in a ''serious manner'' with a view to improving bilateral relations.

One Japanese education ministry official said, ''All the descriptions China has demanded to be revised are points that had already been revised in response to the ministry's instructions. We have used sufficient caution on those points.''

China's complaints followed by a week a South Korean demand for revisions to 25 passages in the text. Japan dismissed the possibility, to which South Korea responded by withdrawing from planned joint military exercises.

South Korean lawmakers have also applied for a court injunction to stop sales of the textbook, which would not be used in classrooms until next spring.

Japan has insisted the textbook does not represent the government's view of history, but critics in China deny such distinctions.

An editorial in the English-language China Daily on Thursday charged that ''Japan is always trying to fudge its ugly past,'' thus undermining China's earnest effort to ''pursue peaceful development.''

The same article also attacked Japan's new prime minister for his ''obstinacy'' in planning an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead, including seven convicted Class A war criminals.

Koizumi has ''never shown remorse for the suffering Japan caused during World War II'' and the 35 million deaths China suffered at the hands of Japanese militarists between 1937 and 1945, the China Daily said.