The recent machinations of China against Japan are unsettling. Can it be possible that the Communist dictators in Beijing don't recognize the irony of China telling Japan it "must face up to its past"? As perhaps the most brutal regime on the face of the earth over the past 50 years, China is hardly in a position to throw stones at anyone.
I certainly don't sympathize with Japan, and believe strongly that just as Germany must never forget its heinous genocide during the Holocaust, Japan must continue to eschew its imperialist designs and brutality of the past.
But complaints by China about textbooks in Japan minimizing Japan's role in World War II are hypocritical, at best. One can only imagine the lies and deceit woven into the fabric of brainwashing taking place in Chinese textbooks in schools every single day. It is probably true that China brainwashes and lies to more children on any given day than all of the world's other children over the past 50 years combined.
Nor does China stop with textbooks. It lies in its captive media about communism, about China and its own sordid history, including its invasion and eugenics policy in Tibet, kidnapping the Panchen Lama and replacing him with a handpicked puppet, oppression and aggression against Taiwan and the vicious lie known as the "one China" policy, to fulfill the plan to destroy Taiwan's democracy and its culture -- the very existence of which demonstrates the comparative failure and weakness of communism.
Then there is China's facilitation of wars by brutal communist dictators in Vietnam, and Korea, support of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and of North Korea's dictators, father and son, guilty of murdering hundreds of thousands, and starving millions.
What about China's totalitarian oppression of all free speech, religious worship outside its Communist-policed churches and the flow of all information from the outside world?
Compared to the surreal 1984-like communist dictatorship in China, Japan is a relatively free, open and democratic society which contributes to the world, not threatens it every single day, as does China.
Of course we must ensure Japan is reminded it must remain vigilant against the rise of imperialism. But China's complaints are empty, coming from the world's worst communist dictatorship, with a long history of death and destruction, and denial of even the most basic human rights, even against its own people.
When a group of thousands of "protesters" take to the streets of Shanghai to protest against Japan, I see thousands of hired thugs demonstrating as a means of taking the spotlight off China's brutal regime.
In fact, the louder China complains about Japan, the clearer the warning against becoming too close to China becomes. This could be you, if you allow China to blackmail you over the years. If you disappoint brutal communist dictators, they will stop at nothing to destroy you.
Unless the world wakes up to this very disturbing policy at the very heart of China's global plans, before too long, China's blackmail today will become tomorrow's rule of law.
Lee Long-hwa
United States
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her