China, Japan shrine spat festers
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BEIJING, China -- The fallout from China's decision to pull out of a top level meeting in Japan earlier this week continues to pollute the atmosphere between the two Asian powers.
China has again condemned Japanese political leadership over its attitude towards visits to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine, the trigger point for canceling a planned meeting between China's Vice Premier Wu Yi and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
"The extremely wrong remarks the Japanese leaders repeatedly made recently on visiting the Yasukuni shrine, in defiance of the appeal of the international community and the feelings of people in countries invaded by Japan during World War II, have aroused concern about whether Japan really wants to seek peaceful development," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
"China hopes Japanese leaders could take seriously the feelings of the Asian countries that fell victims of Japanese militarists, really express their remorse for the historical tragedy and put what they have promised into practice," Kong Quan said, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.
Wu called short her eight-day visit to Japan on Monday. The trip had been designed to ease tensions between the two nations, which had been stirred up by a string of anti-Japanese protests in China in recent months. (Full story)
Japanese officials have condemned the canceled meeting as a breach of political etiquette.
"If she had some urgent business to take care of, we would, of course, understand," Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Tuesday.
"But just one word of apology would have been needed for us to live in this human society."
Vice Premier Wu is now on a state visit to Mongolia, after China initially told Japan that she was required back in China on urgent domestic business.
The Yasukuni shrine -- which honors not only Japan's war dead but also some of its more notorious wartime leaders -- has long been a source of irritation between Japan and its Asian neighbors.
Prime Minister Koizumi last visited the Yasukuni shrine in January last year and said last week he would make an "appropriate decision" on when to go again.
"If today, the German chancellor (Gerhard Schroeder) went somewhere to honor the memory of Adolf Hitler, the next day he would be forced to step down as chancellor," Professor Wu Jianmin, President of the Chinese Foreign Affairs University, told CNN.
"He would be condemned by the international community.
"Today in Japan political figures, including the prime minister, keep paying visits to the Yasukuni shrine," Professor Wu said.
Chinese protests
Relations between the Asian neighbors have soured after recent anti-Japan protests and violence in China.
Protesters have focused on a school textbook approved by Japan's education ministry that China says whitewashes Japanese wartime atrocities.
Chinese demonstrators in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing have also rallied against Tokyo's bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.
Japanese missions and the ambassador's residence in Beijing were pelted with rocks and eggs and Japanese restaurants were vandalized.
Many in Japan are unimpressed about Beijing's response to the protests, suggesting authorities have tacitly condoned the anti-Japanese sentiment.
In a recent nationwide poll conducted by the leading Yomiuri newspaper, 92 percent of respondents said they were unhappy with the way Beijing reacted to the disturbances.
Earlier in the week, Wu told Japanese business officials that recent tensions were "a disadvantage to the development of economic and trade relations," and said that "both sides must work to quickly find a breakthrough."
"The current situation is wrong, and it goes against what the people of both countries wish for and what is beneficial to them," The Associated Press reported her saying.
China is Japan's biggest trading partner.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
