By Shannon Tiezzi
Xinhua uses historical issues to question the wisdom of a close US-Japan alliance.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in the United States on Sunday, beginning his visit with a stop in Boston. With a major goal of the visit to expand U.S.-Japan defense cooperation (including through the newly revised defense guidelines), China is paying close attention to the visit.
China has natural concerns about a strong alliance between its neighbor to the east and the United States, particularly as both parties aren’t shy about expressing their opposition to Chinese moves in the region (especially its attempts to shore up its claims to sovereignty over islands in the East and South China Seas). Interestingly, however, China often doesn’t frame its objections through the lens of present-day security concerns, opting instead to mount an attack on Abe’s attitude toward history. In the Chinese line of argument, Abe’s refusal to fully apologize or face up to atrocities committed during World War II makes the prospect of a stronger Japanese military today a threat to global peace.
As Hong Lei, a spokeperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, put it in a recent press conference:
[T]he statements made and messages sent by the Japanese leader to the outside world on the history issue not only affect the process of reconciliation between Japan and its Asian neighbors, but also help the international community detect whether Japan sticks to the path of peaceful development.
In other words, Japan’s treatment of the past is seen as future-oriented, a way of predicting what Tokyo’s intentions are.
Read the full story at The Diplomat