Chinese and Japanese Leaders Agree to Rescue Ties.

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MaomingMaster
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Joined: Feb 03, 2004
Posts: 11059

Posted: Apr 24, 2005 - 07:01 AM
Post subject: Chinese and Japanese Leaders Agree to Rescue Ties.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-northasia.html

Quote:

Chinese and Japanese Leaders Agree to Rescue Ties
By REUTERS

Published: April 23, 2005

Filed at 6:38 p.m. ET

JAKARTA (Reuters) - The leaders of China and Japan agreed to mend ruptured ties during ice-breaking talks in Jakarta on Saturday, though Chinese President Hu Jintao said Japan needed to learn from its wartime past.

They met a day after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made an unusually public apology for Japan's past atrocities in Asia during a summit of Asian and African leaders in the Indonesian capital.

Ties between the Asian giants had deteriorated to their worst since the normalization of relations in 1972, putting at risk economic links worth $212 billion in annual trade.

``If the appearance of serious problems in Sino-Japanese relations is not handled properly ... not only will it be detrimental to China and Japan, but it will also affect the stability and development of Asia,'' Hu told reporters.

``Remorse expressed for the war of aggression should be translated into action. (Japan) should never do anything again that would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people or the people of other Asian countries.''

Koizumi said he had had a frank and meaningful exchange with Hu, adding the two had agreed not to debate Japan's wartime history or visits by Japanese politicians to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo, both sources of much of the friction.

``We were able to confirm at the meeting that, rather than criticizing each other's past shortcomings and aggravating antagonistic feelings, we should make efforts to develop the bilateral friendship,'' Koizumi told a news conference after the one-hour talks.

``Japan and China need each other now more than ever before.''

Hu said differences between the countries needed to be resolved through dialogue. Japan also needed to meet its commitment not to support independence for Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, Hu added.

There have been violent anti-Japan demonstrations in China over school history textbooks that critics say sugarcoat Japan's wartime history and over other irritants, including Tokyo's campaign for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Beijing says 35 million Chinese were killed or wounded during Japan's 1931-45 occupation of much of the country.

The two leaders shook hands as they met in a hotel ballroom. Koizumi used both hands and appeared relaxed while Hu was stiff and expressionless. When they sat opposite each other at a long table, Koizumi told Hu about his trip earlier in the day to the tsunami-hit province of Aceh.

``I went to Aceh province today ... I saw that a roof of a two-story building had been destroyed by the tsunami and realized how tall the waves were,'' Koizumi said before reporters were ushered out of the room.

PUBLIC APOLOGY

On Friday, Koizumi apologized in a speech before 100 Asian and African leaders, including Hu, for the ``tremendous damage and suffering'' inflicted by Japan in past wars.

Asked earlier about Chinese government comments that action was more important than words, Koizumi, speaking in Aceh, said:

``In the last 60 years we have became an economic superpower and not a military state. (We are a) peaceful nation reflecting on the experience of the war.''

But, showing how easily ties can be upset, a Japanese cabinet minister and 80 other parliamentarians paid their respects on Friday at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a symbol of the animosity, prompting an angry response from Beijing.

Relations with China chilled markedly after Koizumi took office in 2001 and began annual visits to the shrine.

He has not visited yet this year. Asked about his visits, Koizumi did not say whether he would continue them or not, merely saying: ``I would deal appropriately with Yasukuni.''

Japanese officials said Koizumi did not demand an apology or compensation for damage done to Japanese missions in China in the past few weeks. But he did ask Beijing to take appropriate measures to protect Japanese interests in China.

China launched a campaign to cool down tempers this week. It sent veteran diplomats to give lectures on the benefits as well as the history of Sino-Japanese ties to Communist Party members and officials as well as university students, who were urged to focus on their studies.

Police also issued a strong warning on Thursday that those who took part in unauthorized prοtests would be punished.

This looks like definitely a much better Great Leap Forward.

I'm quite sure that this subject is not done and dusted, but it's for sure a big step in the right direction.

I couldn't help but smile about the line about Hu looking stiff and expressionless - does he have any other expression??

BaDaXianRen
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Joined: July 11, 2004
Posts: 3298

Posted: Apr 25, 2005 - 06:48 AM

Japan Criticizes China History Textbooks

Japan Criticizes China History Textbooks

Sun Apr 24, 1:34 PM ET

By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - Japan opened a new front in its dispute with China on Sunday by sharply criticizing Beijing's history textbooks, signaling continued friction between the Asian powers despite high-profile diplomatic moves to quell tensions.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura refuted Chinese claims that Japanese textbooks gloss over Tokyo's World War II-era atrocities, firing back in a TV talk show Sunday that China's schools indoctrinate their students with an unbalanced take on the past.

"There is a tendency toward this in any country, but the Chinese textbooks are extreme in the way they uniformly convey the 'our country is correct' perspective," Machimura said, echoing Sunday's editorial in Japan's largest newspaper accusing China of nationalistic education.

Machimura said Tokyo would officially inform Beijing of its opinion of Chinese textbooks after fully reviewing them. He said China's state councilor and former foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, had invited him to do so during a recent discussion.

The firm language reflected Japan's sometimes contradictory approach in handling the conflict with China, which erupted into a string of violent anti-Japanese prοtests in Chinese cities after Tokyo approved the latest version of a textbook by nationalist historians. China claims the books play down such Japanese wartime atrocities as mass sex slavery and germ warfare.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday made the most public apology in a decade for his country's bloody march through Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, and then pressed hard for a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of a regional summit in Indonesia.

Despite the diplomatic push, Tokyo also has sent strong signals that it will not be bullied by Beijing. Just hours before Koizumi made his apology, some 80 lawmakers, including a Cabinet member, paid homage at a Tokyo war shrine that China criticizes for honoring war criminals.

Machimura also mixed his attack on Chinese textbooks with praise of the Koizumi-Hu meeting Saturday, saying of China: "They're next door. We can't move. They're important and we're important to each other."

The diplomatic moves have calmed some of the fury on the Chinese side, where the government has been tightening controls on prοtesters over the past week. Despite the troubles, Japan is a major source of investment in China's rapidly expanding economy.

Chinese state media urged prοtesters to stay off the streets Sunday, and dozens of paramilitary troops guarded the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, where demonstrators in past weeks have thrown rocks with little interference from police.

Hong Kong's Cable TV reported that more than 300 people in the southern city of Zhuhai marched to a Japanese-owned factory but were blocked by police. The broadcaster said the crowd eventually dispersed.

Officials in Zhuhai denied the report.

"There were no anti-Japan prοtests," said a city official who gave only his surname, Zhang.

The recent tensions come after several years of troubled relations between Japan and China, whose emergence as an economic power is making it Tokyo's competitor for influence in Asia.

Though Beijing is incensed by Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukuni war shrine, the differences go far beyond interpretations of World War II history. The two are feuding over the ownership of East China Sea islands, gas exploration rights, the division of exclusive economic zones and Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Hu made a direct mention of broader problems following the meeting with Koizumi, saying that Tokyo must refuse to support any moves toward independence by Taiwan. The self-ruled island and the mainland split during civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims it as its territory.