Chinese authorities in Nanjing have suspended official contacts with Nagoya after the Japanese city’s mayor cast doubt over the well-documented massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops in 1937.
China says 300,000 people were killed that year in an orgy of murder, rape and destruction when the eastern city of Nanjing — then the capital — fell to the Japanese army and the incident has haunted Sino-Japanese ties ever since.
According to Japan’s Kyodo news agency, Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura, told Liu Zhiwei (劉志偉), a high-level Chinese official visiting from Nanjing, that he believes only “conventional acts of combat” took place.
During talks on Monday between the two — whose cities were twinned in 1978 — Kawamura, whose father was in Nanjing in 1945 at the end of the Japanese occupation of China, reportedly denied that mass murders and rapes happened.
Some Japanese academics also contest the number of casualties in Nanjing and say estimates range from 20,000 to 200,000.
Kawamura’s comments have triggered outrage in China and the Nanjing municipal party committee announced late on Tuesday that it had suspended ties with Nagoya.
“In view of the current denial by Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura of historical facts pertaining to the Nanjing Massacre, which seriously hurt Nanjing people’s feelings, Nanjing city is suspending official contact with the government of Nagoya,” it said on its official account on a Chinese microblogging site.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) on Monday also waded into the controversy, hitting back at Kawamura’s comments.
“The Nanjing Massacre was a brutal crime committed by Japanese military during their war and invasion, and there is irrefutable evidence,” he said.
“Some Japanese people should correctly understand … that period of history and earnestly draw lessons from history,” he said.
Many people in China still feel resentment toward Japan, which waged a war against its giant neighbor from 1937 to 1945, occupying vast swathes of the country.
Relations between the two countries have steadily warmed since 2006, when they began to put behind them decades of distrust, but ties are still fragile and have been rocked by spot incidents in recent years.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number