|
|
|
|
China's quandary over Japan's UN
bid
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - The rise of anti-Japanese
sentiment in China ahead of a September United
Nations' vote on Japan's bid for a permanent seat
on the world body's prestigious Security Council
has put Beijing in a difficult position. As a
Security Council member itself, China is in a
quandary on how to vote while balancing fiercely
nationalistic public opinion with long-term
interests.
In the wake of a series of
anti-Japanese riots over the weekend, Chinese
diplomats were quick to pledge unclouded judgement
together with a long-term view when handling the
expansion of the UN Security Council. As one of
the council's five current permanent members,
China can veto any proposal it deems detrimental.
Nevertheless, Beijing has rarely used its power to
oppose an international consensus.
Foreign
Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao promised on Monday
that China would take a "highly responsible"
attitude and "deal with the issue of reforming the
UN Security Council from the perspective of
maintaining world peace and promoting common
development".
But the possibility of Japan
gaining a seat on the revamped Security Council
has stirred a deep reservoir of public resentment
against Tokyo because of its World War II actions.
Having encouraged the expression of anti-Japanese
sentiment for years, Beijing now feels uneasy
about pitching its carefully crafted image of a
responsible international player against the
domestic outpouring of nationalistic fervor.
Anti-Japanese protests in at least two
Chinese cities - Chengdu in Sichuan province and
Shenzhen in Guangdong - led to violent riots on
the weekend, with protesters throwing eggs and
smashing windows of Japanese department stores.
The riots come on the heels of a
much-publicized online campaign against Tokyo's
bid for a UN Security Council seat and a boycott
of goods made by Japanese companies that
reportedly supported controversial revisions of
history textbooks that papered over Japan's role
in World War II.
According to local media
reports, Japanese goods, including the popular
Asahi beer, beauty products, shampoo and others
were taken off shelves in supermarkets and bars in
cities in northeast China. This part of China,
site of the former Manchuria, was where the
Japanese army first made inroads into Chinese
territory in 1931, and the local people here still
harbor painful memories from the occupation.
In newer versions of Japanese history
books, China is blamed for the outbreak of the
Sino-Japanese war (1894-95), while historical
evidence for the Nanjing massacre carried out by
the Japanese army in 1937 is described as
"inconclusive" and "under debate" (see Tortuous
tangles over Japanese textbooks,
October 26, 2004).
Millions of mainland
and overseas Chinese are reported to have joined
the online petition campaign opposing Japan's UN
bid. The campaign was launched by several overseas
Chinese websites and quickly picked up momentum in
China with the participation of popular Internet
portals such as Sohu, Sina and Netease.
The state news agency Xinhua reported last
week that 22.2 million Chinese had signed the
petition so far. Organizers of the campaign aim to
present the petition to the Untied Nations in
August - a month before the UN resolution to
expand the council is expected to be voted upon.
In his blueprint for changing the UN
structure unveiled on March 21, Secretary General
Kofi Annan appeared to suggest that big financial
donors to the United Nations such as Japan and
Germany would be prime candidates for permanent
seats on the revised Security Council line-up.
The council should "increase the
involvement in decision-making of those who
contribute most to the Untied Nations financially,
militarily and diplomatically, specifically in
terms of contributions to United Nations' assessed
budgets," said Annan.
Japan is among the
UN's largest financial contributors. In addition,
the United States is backing Japan in its demand
for a permanent Security Council seat.
For
Beijing, the decision on the UN vote is further
complicated by the fact that economic ties between
China and Japan are booming - last year China
surpassed the US to become Japan's largest trading
partner.
But even before the storm over
the Security Council revamp blew up, political
relations were strained by Japan's pledge to help
the United States defend Taiwan against China,
Beijing's growing military spending, the recent
incursion of a Chinese submarine into Japanese
waters and disputes over mutually claimed energy
resources.
Beijing had reacted with
growing anger to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine,
which honors Japanese World War II dead including
convicted war criminals. During the annual session
of the Chinese parliament in March, legislators
debated several proposals to retaliate against
those pilgrimages.
One of the proposals
put forward was to declare the 1937 Nanjing
Massacre memorial as a national shrine, where
Chinese leaders would be able to honor the dead
and attended a ceremony every year on December 13
- the day the mass killings started that year.
Chinese historians estimate that in the six weeks
of brutal killings carried out by the Japanese,
more than 300,000 civilians perished.
"Why
can Japanese leaders go on publicly worshipping
those criminals but we can't pay respect even to
our dead compatriots?" asked Zhu Chengshan,
director of the Nanjing Massacre memorial hall.
Japan's recent maneuvers have hardly been
helpful in resolving the mounting rows between the
two countries, say Chinese analysts. In its
pursuit of a UN Security Council seat, Tokyo has
shown little respect for the sensibilities of its
neighbors and former wartime enemies, argued Chen
Xiangyang of the China Institute for International
Relations.
"By contrast, they [the
Japanese] have pulled out all stops to court
Germany, India and Brazil - the other three
candidates for Security Council seats, and to use
economic aid to buy the support of other
developing countries," Chen said.
(Inter
Press Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
