Japan is a lier on its Fascist history and should not be on the Security Council

This is in response to 2 articles "The genie escapes" and "A collision in East Asia" on China and Japan on the April 14 edition of THE ECONOMIST:

Even if Chinese government may seem manipulative of situation in allowing "anti-Japan" protests but not others, this does not justify Japan's plain denial of its hideous crimes. I'm dismayed to see how little has been explored and expounded on Japan's blatant lies, its culture of blind loyalty to power and its own nationalism. I'm shocked to see how quickly some so-called experts jump to the conclusion that China will have a problem if the protest gets out of control, as if that is a scenario that they just can't wait to see.

After all, Japan committed a crime against the HUMANITY and it is still denying it till this day. Can you imagine Schroeder paying annual tribute to Hitler because he died for his own country? How can such a country like Japan be on the Security Council?! I'm disgusted when I read "In service of its present interests, China endlessly drags up the legacy of the past..." This assertion further victimizes the genuine indignation of the Chinese people. This writer is in effect an accomplice in continuing Japan's atrocities, if not a Right Wing activist himself/herself.

The writers certainly failed to mention similar protests in Korea and the vandalism, damage and blackmail to Chinese embassy and Bank of China branch in Japan, which will make their points weaker. They also failed the precision test: the Chinese people are against Japanese RIGHT WING, not all Japanese.

The article in question:

China, Japan and the UN

A collision in East Asia

Apr 14th 2005
From The Economist print edition

There should be no enlarged Security Council without Japan

YOU can be sure that a march of 10,000 protesters through the heart of Beijing would have been halted by China's security services if they had been marching for democracy. Since they were marching instead to denounce Japan, for its supposed failure to apologise for historical crimes, and for its temerity in seeking permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, China's authorities allowed the demonstration to go ahead, with predictable results (see article). Japanese shops were ransacked and Japan's embassy pelted with eggs and stones. The protests, which had started in Chengdu a week earlier, spread to other cities, including Shenzhen and Guangzhou in the prosperous south.

For anyone who had taken the view that the present proposals to reform the United Nations and change the architecture of the Security Council were just a parlour game for diplomats, these demonstrations mark a rude awakening. All of the council's permanent five?America, Britain, China, France and Russia?guard their seats at the top table jealously and are wary about the prospect of this honour being diluted. Some, it is now plain, are willing to whip up the emotions of their people to resist unwanted newcomers. And when it comes to China and Japan, those emotions are still remarkably raw.

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that these two Asian giants are scarcely any better reconciled than they were in 1972, when they established diplomatic relations. This is true in spite of an economic relationship that has grown increasingly intimate. In most years, China and Japan are nowadays each other's biggest trading partner. Some 16,000 Japanese firms do business on the Chinese mainland: Japan's technology and China's low-paid workers make a natural and mutually advantageous fit. In culture and consumption, too, the two countries are growing closer: younger Chinese admire Japanese boy-bands, older ones relish buying reliable Japanese cars and applying Japanese cosmetics.

In politics, however, the story is quite different. The mighty neighbours are competing for natural resources and squabbling over the sovereignty of tiny islands. In service of its present interests, China endlessly drags up the legacy of the past, taking the view that Japan has never apologised properly for its brutal behaviour in China during the second world war and before. No Chinese president has visited Japan since 1998, and Japan's prime minister has not been to China since 2001.

If anything, relations have in fact grown worse. In previous decades the wounds of war were no less deep but the neighbours enjoyed a sort of understanding about their respective places in the world. China was a heavyweight in geopolitics but an economic weakling. Japan was the opposite: an economic superpower, barred by its own constitution and historical guilt from playing any significant role in world affairs. But this division of labelling has been breaking down.

China is on the way to becoming an economic superpower: today it is China and no longer Japan that runs the world's biggest trade surplus with the United States. And Japan, which still has the world's second-largest economy, is no longer willing to be a second-class citizen in diplomacy. As a populous and rich democracy, a big contributor of foreign aid, the second-biggest contributor after America to the United Nations, and (within the limits imposed by its post-war constitution, which it has been flexible in reinterpreting) an increasingly active international peacekeeper, it believes it deserves a permanent seat in any enlarged Security Council.

And it is right. The UN's current archaic system gives permanent seats, and vetoes, to five countries and condemns everyone else, no matter how regionally powerful or active in international security, to an occasional two-year term. If permanent membership of the council is to be enlarged, as Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, says he would like it to be, Japan (along with India and Brazil) is a natural candidate by dint of population, standing and economic power. Germany has a strong case, too, though one complicated by the fact that the European Union would then have three permanent members. A case can also be made for a large African country such as South Africa or Nigeria, and perhaps an Arab one, such as Egypt. But what is absolutely plain is that to add India, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa or Egypt but to exclude Japan would not only constitute an egregious insult to the Japanese but also make a nonsense of the whole exercise.

Don't call the whole thing off

In which case, should the exercise be abandoned? That might be convenient to some. Countries such as Italy and Pakistan, dismayed by the prospect of neighbours and rivals taking places at the top table, are already complaining. Although America pays lip service to enlargement, it might welcome an excuse to stick with the present system?and China's exclusion of Japan would certainly provide one. But what a pity that would be. The UN system will never be perfect, but it can be improved to reflect the world more as it is today, not as it was at the end of the second world war more than half a century ago. The Japanese belong in an enlarged Security Council?not least so the Chinese come to understand that they cannot have everything their way in East Asia's future.