ong friend. Japan is like a mad dog, and sooner or later, it’ll cause the U.S. great trouble,” says Zhang Yihua, 32, an advertising designer.
On Saturday in Washington, the United States and Japan issued a joint document that advocated the “peaceful resolution” of the status of Taiwan, the island that Beijing regards as a renegade province. Within days, a commentary in the state-run China Daily newspaper blasted that mild statement as “an irresponsible and reckless move that will have grave consequences.” […]
Today’s democratic Japan, whose military is constitutionally limited to self-defense, bears little resemblance to the empire that ravaged Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. But Friedman says the Chinese have “blinded themselves to this reality.”
Even those too young to have experienced the war are bitter. “Japan brought a lot of harm and pain to the Chinese people. Millions of people died,” Lu says. “This is history that nobody can erase.”
The mass famines of the Great Leap Forward, the brutal purges of the Cultural Revolution, and the occupation of Tibet, are also history that nobody can erase.
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