China's state media have launched a series of attacks on Japan over the way it handles its history, with one paper comparing Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi to a person eating rat excrement.
Beijing also reiterated its opposition yesterday to Koizumi's war shrine visits, but refused to say if the issue would be on the agenda when bilateral talks resume this week.
A short essay in the People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, took aim at Koizumi's repeated visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan's war dead, including 14 Class A war criminals.
"There's an old Chinese saying that one pellet of rat excrement can ruin a whole pot of soup," said the writer, identified as Wu Ming, apparently a pen name.
"Not that the Yasukuni shrine is to be compared to good soup ... but it's completely correct to compare war criminals, especially Class A war criminals, to rat excrement," Wu wrote.
The opinion piece in Monday's edition went on to speculate what would happen if a sane man drank soup which he knew contained rat excrement, suggesting a parallel with Koizumi's visits.
"People would have no choice but to assume a person like that had a special interest in rat excrement," it said.
Meanwhile, foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan (
"This seriously hurts the feelings of the victimized countries and peoples, including the Chinese people, and undermines the normal political foundation for the development of Sino-Japan relations," he said.
However, Kong refused to elaborate on the agenda on the talks, which are scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Tokyo.
"This is another round of the continuous strategic dialogue between our two countries," Kong said. "We will cover a wide range of issues, including bilateral relations and an exchange of views on the regional and international situation."
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo (
The talks will be the first high-level meeting between the two countries since last October.
The English-language China Daily carried an editorial yesterday insisting that Tokyo owed an apology to Taiwan and its other former colonies for Japan's "brutal occupation."
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