Japanese imperialist atrocities, Chinese Communist lies
This morning, AP reports that a district court in Japan has rejected compensation claims by 45 Chinese men who were used as wartime slaves.
They were demanding US$9 million (US$8.5 million according to the BBC) from the government and two companies - Mitsubishi and Matsui Mining Co. - involved in taking them from their homes in China and into forced labour in Fukuoka between 1943 and the end of WWII.
One of the plaintiffs' lawyers says the case was ruled against despite recognising the wrongdoing due to a 20-year deadline for filing suits and because the current government shouldn't be held responsible for wartime leaders' actions.
A March 20 article by a Fukuoka Jo Gakuin University faculty member says Mitsubishi's defence had denied facts of forced labour accepted by courts hearing earlier cases, going so far as to question whether Japan had "invaded" China at all.
There have been many claims for compensation relating to Japan's war crimes against Chinese people (including forced labour, sex slavery, use of biological and chemical weapons and the Nanjing Massacre) progressing through its courts in recent years.
The great majority have been rejected for similar reasons, most notably that the government of China renounced all potential claims in exchange for aid in 1972's joint statement reestablishing relations between the two countries, though campaigners say this does not cover claims made by private citizens.
Shocking though the wartime atrocities committed by Japan are, I found the way they are perceived in China to be extremely warped by the lens of Communist misinformation, particularly among younger people.
Taught history has to conform to the Communist Party's narrative, portraying it as the saviour of the Chinese people and legitimating its authority over them.
As far as I could tell this results in a focus on the overlapping civil war and Japanese invasion, in which the Party's role in securing their own victory is exagerrated, and a brushing over of the millions who were killed and many more who suffered from Communist policies during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
Whilst many of my older Chinese colleagues could contextualise Japan's crimes within history, those in their 20s, though educated, were either largely unaware of or disinterested in significant events between 1945 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.
It is no coincidence that this is a generation so easily provoked into anti-Japanese demonstrations and violence over a textbook used in a small minority of Japanese schools with no reference to the books used universally in Chinese schools that whitewash Communist mass murder and lethal negligence under Mao Zedong.
Beijing Loafer talks about the reluctance of Chinese people to criticise a government that casts itself in a parental role, pandering to the misguided Confucian obsession with filial piety - contrasting sharply with the Communists' hackneyed demands for the Japanese government to "take history as a mirror and look forward to the future."
There does appear to be a huge amount of denial in Japan about its wartime actions, but repeatedly coming face to face with this hypocrisy in Beijing left me with little sympathy for those seeking compensation.
Instead, I (unfairly) began to see them simply as pawns used by the Party to help score points in wider strategies against its neighbour, keeping a check on its role in the UN and competing for natural resources.
Once again, the Chinese people are victims of their biggest real enemy: the Chinese government.
They were demanding US$9 million (US$8.5 million according to the BBC) from the government and two companies - Mitsubishi and Matsui Mining Co. - involved in taking them from their homes in China and into forced labour in Fukuoka between 1943 and the end of WWII.
One of the plaintiffs' lawyers says the case was ruled against despite recognising the wrongdoing due to a 20-year deadline for filing suits and because the current government shouldn't be held responsible for wartime leaders' actions.
A March 20 article by a Fukuoka Jo Gakuin University faculty member says Mitsubishi's defence had denied facts of forced labour accepted by courts hearing earlier cases, going so far as to question whether Japan had "invaded" China at all.
There have been many claims for compensation relating to Japan's war crimes against Chinese people (including forced labour, sex slavery, use of biological and chemical weapons and the Nanjing Massacre) progressing through its courts in recent years.
The great majority have been rejected for similar reasons, most notably that the government of China renounced all potential claims in exchange for aid in 1972's joint statement reestablishing relations between the two countries, though campaigners say this does not cover claims made by private citizens.
Shocking though the wartime atrocities committed by Japan are, I found the way they are perceived in China to be extremely warped by the lens of Communist misinformation, particularly among younger people.
Taught history has to conform to the Communist Party's narrative, portraying it as the saviour of the Chinese people and legitimating its authority over them.
As far as I could tell this results in a focus on the overlapping civil war and Japanese invasion, in which the Party's role in securing their own victory is exagerrated, and a brushing over of the millions who were killed and many more who suffered from Communist policies during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
Whilst many of my older Chinese colleagues could contextualise Japan's crimes within history, those in their 20s, though educated, were either largely unaware of or disinterested in significant events between 1945 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.
It is no coincidence that this is a generation so easily provoked into anti-Japanese demonstrations and violence over a textbook used in a small minority of Japanese schools with no reference to the books used universally in Chinese schools that whitewash Communist mass murder and lethal negligence under Mao Zedong.
Beijing Loafer talks about the reluctance of Chinese people to criticise a government that casts itself in a parental role, pandering to the misguided Confucian obsession with filial piety - contrasting sharply with the Communists' hackneyed demands for the Japanese government to "take history as a mirror and look forward to the future."
There does appear to be a huge amount of denial in Japan about its wartime actions, but repeatedly coming face to face with this hypocrisy in Beijing left me with little sympathy for those seeking compensation.
Instead, I (unfairly) began to see them simply as pawns used by the Party to help score points in wider strategies against its neighbour, keeping a check on its role in the UN and competing for natural resources.
Once again, the Chinese people are victims of their biggest real enemy: the Chinese government.
posted by Kuvera at
08:02
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