China's leadership fans antipathy toward Japan

In short, they want the Chinese people to hate Japan, and if necessary destroy it, rather than appreciate it and cooperate with it to embetter their own quality of life.

The "enemy without" to distract from the enemy within ... the Communisty Party and the elite it serves.

Regarding 1970's Japan’s ODA towards China, let’s not forget the 6+ billions in loan assistance which Japan has provided to China over many decades, and which China has eagerly taken to finance its development. It seems odd that China conveniently forgot past aggressions from Japan when billions of money was flowing its way. China’s continuing problems with its neighbors go far beyond its relations with Japan.

How time has changed. It may seem strange today but Mao Zedong discouraged public discourse about the Japanese invasion and waived reparations. During his reign, Nanking was far from becoming Chinese target for Japanese brutality. Why Japan became a easy target? This was when new communist leaders, transforming their country into a market economy, first began to face the problems of uneven growth, which included social unrest on a huge scale. Honoring the memories of Sino-Japanese War became main focus to the post-Cold War Chinese strategy of finding new foils internationally and fresh ideological legitimacy at home.

The event is happening and the misstatements will continue.

Our opinions at this juncture and within this framework does not matter and shall have NO menaingful effect either way.

However, I do wish and hope that some media in some nation at some time will "disclose" the fact the the war was won with the entire effort being supported by Allies that supplied the Chinese forces. , And it should also be said that in the same war, during and after, the Chinese Communists literally slaughtered millions of their own, just to bring and keep Mao and the communist government into power.

If any word of appreciation is needed, it is to the Allied nations. If any apology is needed it is the Chinese government to their own people.

What will be a better time, but during such an event?

the beef I had was with your folowing statement "The Japanese are just as feudalistic as they were before the war." Which you listed "evidence" for.

Exactly. I listed evidence.

@Stangerland

??? I'm not sure what any of this has to do with anything

uhh.. I totally agree, that was my point. You're the one who brought it up . In fact the beef I had was with your folowing statement "The Japanese are just as feudalistic as they were before the war." Which you listed "evidence" for. You need to pick up a dictionary and look up what evidence means.

And don't worry, no rational person would frame you for being a Japan apologist (unless they were trying to be funny.. Still wouldn't be funny though LOL)

The more salient point is that the desired political effect can be had by more gentle forms of controlling what most people see starting from birth

And I reiterate my position that Japan does this as well.

katsu78

Let me settle it this way. As I implicitly agree in my first post, if we must restrict ourselves to such narrow definitions of brainwashing, very few have.

The more salient point is that the desired political effect can be had by more gentle forms of controlling what most people see starting from birth.

And while that doesn't make them non-human, it is important to recognize the slopes governments create in people, and to be self-aware of what is happening to you, without any coercive persuasion techniques.

Brainwashing is not done by compelling the victim to believe, but by not allowing them access to information which would question the party line and pushing the latter at every opportunity - just like the Chinese are doing now. Fortunately it is more difficult to control information these days, thanks to the internet and international travel, which could go a long way to explain the enlightened views the some here have found among the population in China. The only question is, how long are they going to put up with their Communist masters?

Thunderbird2 AUG. 31, 2015 - 09:58PM JST So the Chinese just have an innate antipathy against the Japanese without any encouragement from the authorities?

Wow, that's the best demonstration of a strawman argument I've seen in a long time.

No, most Chinese people don't have an innate antipathy toward Japanese people, though I'd wager that a fair number from areas that suffered the worst under them (like Nanking) could. Government encouragement from authorities does not make something brainwashing. To be brainwashing, the authority must compel the victim, not simply encourage the victim.

Once more, because many people really, really don't seem to be getting this: Propaganda != brainwashing. Everyone in the world experiences propaganda to some degree or another. Hardly anyone outside of certain cults experiences brainwashing. Basically, it doesn't exist.

If the Chinese hate Japan so much and are brainwashed, are they still coming to Japan, and buying up in Akihabara and Ginza?

It seems like every nation has its wonderland where their people are pure and innocent. Japan has Yasukuni, China has its own propaganda. Not to mention North Korea which is trying to be anything but authentic..

Why so much anger, after so much time? It’s complicated.

The current population of Japan, in general, no longer care that the Chinese government uses such tactics to 'deflect' and 'unite' the population nor do they care about the 'enlightened' Chinese tourists who experienced Japan.

BTW, for a matter of fairness, I don't think Americans are not brainwashed either

Oh, I know I'm not brainwashed. Fox News told me so!

There's an old joke in Russia from during the Cold War era, "the only difference between the Russian people and the American people is that the Russian know they are being fed propaganda and brainwashed".

@clueless

One last time ... Japan has apologized and compensated. It was sincere and a lot. Please register that, get over and move on.

Thank you.

Kazuaki - you listed off why you thought the things I mentioned were ok, but we weren't talking about whether or not they are ok, we are talking about whether Japan 'brainwashes' the population in the same manner as you described China as 'brainwashing' their people. So your post was irrelevant, as you basically agreed all those things are happening.

If there weren't so many Chinese in Japan studying,living,sightseeing in Kyoto, buying milk powder etc etc I could tell you that they are brainwashed but .......

@Katsu78

Brainwashing is a radical change to someone's cognition, compelling them to believe things radically different from what they used to believe without the ordinarily normal human ability to change their mind.

So the Chinese just have an innate antipathy against the Japanese without any encouragement from the authorities? Yeah, you keep believing that, mate. People are not born into hating another society, they are spoonfed that hatred from day one, building and building up more hatred until you get to the point where, upon hearing Japanese spoken they react violently.

You also know what's funny? I saw on eBay an advert for a Japanese action figure. The CHINESE seller blurred out the Japanese flag, and it wasn't the rising sun... so that means that the modern Japanese flag is seen as something evil in China... now tell me they aren't brainwashed.

cluelessAug. 31, 2015 - 01:02PM JST This will never end. And I get the beef China has with Japan. Id want to celebrate the ending of such a brutal period in my >countries history too.They are owed a massive apology from Japan. You can run from your past but it always catches up >with you.Why is it so difficult just to say sorry?

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/China-Japan-Relations/2013-09/25/content_16992761.htm

http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/treaty78.html

Kazuaki ShimazakiAUG. 31, 2015 - 02:26PM JST If your definition of brainwashing is so narrow that only those who completely toe the Party line counts, then you are right that very few people got brainwashed. However, monochromaticity of thought is the goal, or even desirable, only in a few scenarios (for example during Total War).

It's starting to appear that maybe you are operating under a very non-standard notion of what "brainwashing" means.

"Brainwashing" does not mean "lots of people think things I don't like".

"Brainwashing" does not mean "lots of people have been influenced by government propaganda."

"Brainwashing" does not mean "It hasn't occurred to lots of people to see things from my point of view."

Brainwashing is a radical change to someone's cognition, compelling them to believe things radically different from what they used to believe without the ordinarily normal human ability to change their mind.

Despite a couple of exceptions (North Korean refugees afraid to think things critical of The State because they've been brought up in a cult that says Dear Leader can read their mind all the way from PyongYang, cults which lovebomb the desperate and the lonely and then manipulate the victim into isolating themselves from anyone not in the cult) brainwashing doesn't exist. Extensive research into the subject has been done during the cold war, and basically it can't be done. Authoritarians can break people's will to disobey them, they can trick people with misleading information, but they can't actually force a change to someone's thought process outside of very special conditions that generally don't exist in societies larger than isolated hamlets.

"Brainwashing" however, can be used as a tool for propaganda. Tell people that your ideological opponent is brainwashed (even though of course they aren't), and you dehumanize them. Your claim carries the implicit assumption that (A) the opponent is incapable of being convinced by your argument so it's not worth it to try (which saves you from having to go through the trouble of making an argument that could be proven fallacious), and (B) the opponent is so far gone that really, if it came to armed conflict and you had to kill them, well, they aren't fully human any more so it's not such a big loss. In fact, though the notion of "brainwashing" didn't exist in WWII, the argument that Japanese soldiers were fanatically loyal to the Emperor to the point that they were incapable of surrendering under any conditions was part of the argument used to justify dropping nuclear weapons on Japan. "They don't think like humans, you know, people like us," the argument went, "so we really have no choice."

The argument that Chinese people are brainwashed is nothing but propaganda. It's shamefully ironic that here in a thread that is so outraged that China would use propaganda to demonize Japanese people, posters are so gleefully willing to employ propaganda that is just as dishonest to dehumanize the Chinese people.

What? Lack of media freedom,

Where. It is a defensible proposition to say that a lot of major media in Japan toes the party line too much, but it is hardly like you can't choose to do otherwise. The worst that would happen is you losing that Press Club privilege but hey, you can't expect your targets to be cooperative if you badmouth them.

the government spinning its own narrative

What, the government can't speak?

secrecy bills

A necessity and well in line with the world.

textbooks lacking details of the ar, people trying to whitewash history

What? So the only histories allowed are full blown mea culpa versions?

When a textbook "lacks details" of the war, it also means the government has extremely limited opportunities to press its own view. It is true that sometimes you can steer a conclusion by missing out a few choice details, but when you are saying as little as a Japanese textbook does, this does not apply.

And I don't see so called History whitewashers a sign of brainwashing. In fact, that they exist means that a historical variant has not been completely indoctrinated. That's a sign of free thought and is completely the opposite of what you contend.

I was once almost beaten up by a group of Chinese lads who overheard me speaking Japanese in Beijing, and was only saved by the intervention of the bouncers outside the club I had just exited (my friends had already departed in a taxi and I was hitting a street food stand on my way to the subway, and randomly bumped into a Chinese girl who knew a little Japanese). To be fair, it was 5am and they were drunk; but it illustrated to me the depth of anti-Japanese sentiment in many Chinese. If it can come out that easily (I'm white and obviously not Japanese) on a personal level, I worry about how easily it could come out on a national level if the CCP pushes certain buttons. Riding the subway in Beijing, the video screens show the usual advertising mixed in with strategic diagrams of US & Japanese military capabilities and footage of China's aircraft carrier fleet etc etc. That is not normal. The parade this week is just more of the same

On the other hand, Yoshinoya, Saizeriya, Ito Yokado, AEON, Lawson et al all seem to be doing a roaring trade in China, and Hello Kitty, Rirakuma and the like are plenty popular with Chinese youth; and my Chinese friends are generally quite nuanced in their attitudes towards Japan - they find much to admire about Japanese culture & people, yet have strong dislikes for Japan as a political entity for historical reasons. The CCP does need Japan as its bogeyman, but Japan should stop making it easy for them with ministerial Yasukuni visits, Nanjing denials etc

My biggest concern about China is not so much the ambitions of the present leaders (I don't think they actually intend to start a conflict with Japan, America, or anyone else), but rather the lack of checks on the power of their leadership and the potential sequence of events that could follow if a real nutter gets his hands on the reins - ominously, the sort of thing that tends to happen when economies run into trouble

Existence of bullying in schools and workplace are proofs of a feudalistic society and militaristic tendencies? What government in the world listens to their people? How successful were people in the USA in stopping recent wars or repealing patriot act?

??? I'm not sure what any of this has to do with anything.

If you were right, pretty much every country in the world should be condemned.

Many do.

Listening to you, one would think that Japan is the last remaining distopia on this planet.

Funny how one day I'll have one poster calling me a Japan apologist, and another day a different poster calling me a Japan hater. I think that's a pretty good sign that I have a healthy balance of opinion, and am not just blindly following some ideal.

In principle, yes, in practice no. For one thing, Japan actually engages in very little brainwashing.

What? Lack of media freedom, the government spinning its own narrative, secrecy bills, textbooks lacking details of the ar, people trying to whitewash history - these are all types of brainwashing in line with the examples you gave above on how Chinese people are brainwashed.

@StrangerlandAUG. 31, 2015 - 02:31PM JST

You realize that it cuts both ways, and that your explanation of how the Chinese are in fact brainwashed can be applied to the Japanese and their beliefs on the same topics as well, right?

In principle, yes, in practice no. For one thing, Japan actually engages in very little brainwashing. Think about the most common textbook complaints. South Korea is protesting about Takeshima entering the textbook - this is to say, until very recently it didn't even rate a mention! The WWII sections are thin, focused on Japan's sufferings, and barely mention Nanking or comfort women. This causes a lot of screaming. Nevertheless, it can hardly be called.brainwashing to say little on a subject.

Second, Japan's brainwashing is as a whole in an extremely inconvenient direction for its leadership, as can be seen in Abe's attempts to rouse the population to support what by international standards would have been a very mild security bill.

@ Strangerland

Brainwashing goes more than 2 ways.

Existence of bullying in schools and workplace are proofs of a feudalistic society and militaristic tendencies? What government in the world listens to their people? How successful were people in the USA in stopping recent wars or repealing patriot act?

Let me ask you, where are you from? If you were right, pretty much every country in the world should be condemned. Listening to you, one would think that Japan is the last remaining distopia on this planet.

There is an idea that all of this is just the US educated Chinese trying to win a power struggle with the Japanese educated Chinese. After normalization, thousands of Chinese came to Japan for university education (some were my classmates). And now that decades later they are vying for high level powerful jobs, this is one of the ways that the US educated Chinese try to suppress the Japan educated Chinese. Notice that the ambassadors from China all speak fluent Japanese (unlike other countries), and China's previous Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke fluent Japanese.

Marching the hate machines!

You realize that it cuts both ways, and that your explanation of how the Chinese are in fact brainwashed can be applied to the Japanese and their beliefs on the same topics as well, right?

katsu78AUG. 31, 2015 - 12:45PM JST

There is a kind of arrogance behind any implication that Chinese people are brainwashed. It implies that your rightness is so self-evident, that the only possible way anyone could disagree with you is if their ability to independently compute facts was taken away.

I'll disagree. I don't think my rightness is completely self-evident, but that's not the same with the Chinese people are not brainwashed.

I've known many, many Chinese people. And out of those many people, only one ever spoke or acted completely in line with what is espoused by The Communist Party.

If your definition of brainwashing is so narrow that only those who completely toe the Party line counts, then you are right that very few people got brainwashed. However, monochromaticity of thought is the goal, or even desirable, only in a few scenarios (for example during Total War).

Most often, the goal of agitprop is to shift the cone of opinion, moving some opinions entirely out of the societally acceptable zone, making some others a few percent less popular or a few percent more. The end result is to make the population as a whole be amenable to what you, the goverment want, leaving them free to act, without feelings being so strong they are forced to act (that's why monochromaticity is a bad idea).

So, that there is some criticism of the party does not mean the agitprop failed. In fact, giving people enough room to feel themselves relatively free is important. Letting some feel they are more enlightened by "celebrating aspects of Japanese culture." But you want your people to be appropriately insensitive to some parts and more sensitive to others.

How many of your friends will say the "Diaoyu islands" might just not be Chinese or at least they should be given up for peace, or that it really isn't such a big deal that Japanese politicians go to commemorate their war dead once in a while. Not many, right? And that's because the Chinese agitprop subtly altered the sensitivities of the Chinese population towards the "Class A" war criminal (really the weakest argument because the criminalization of such activities was actually done post war at the last minute before the trials). Or to actually believe tiny mentions actually can override the Japanese position of terra nullus.

And that's already good enough for the Communist Party. You mention down there about "ammunition", but it is Chinese propaganda that magnifies the value of things that anything can be turned into "ammunition" for convenient fast spurt of anti-Japanese sentiment.

BTW, for a matter of fairness, I don't think Americans are not brainwashed either, this time in the direction of hypersensitivity towards Russia. They may not hate Russians, but as a population tend to believe the worst rumors and impute the worst motives to whatever the Russians do. This would at least be the right idea in the Cold War but IMHO is biting them in the arse vs China.

Massive military parades are stupid in this day and age, best left to backwards countries like North Korea

Hero22: No way you could have read the book in 22 minutes. Yes, the word Conspiracy is in the title. That does not mean the book is not basically fact. I have read other document that support the book. It does not matter that the chance that Japan will return to it's old ways is zero. It is about what Japan's neighbors feel, and that feeling won't leave for a long time unless Japan owns up to it's bad historic actions. Germany did. Visiting Yasukuni Shrine does not help. Check the footnotes and references in the book: "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy" by David Bergamini and come to your own belief - but don't jump on a title and say it is false. An interesting side note, I first came across that book at Waseda University in the library of the International Division! It puts a tremendous amount of Japanese history preceding and during WWII together. Why did Emperor Hirohito visit the water supply of Singapore before the Pacific War started, and how did that contribute to the fall of Singapore? Check the historic record, and read the book.

Keep the hatred going! Teach the children, and they will learn. Where would Japan and the USA be today if it kept the hatred continued after WWII to today? By 1948, as soon as the new pro-Japan propaganda was presented to school children in the USA, the Japanese were the Americans' friends. Just exactly how many days are there in a year designated for an annual display of hatred. Let it go historians and lecturers. Everyone has heard it before, over and over, and it needs to stop.

Peter Payne: Yet Japan and ONLY Japan is taken to task for every act of colonialism ever, and no one expects the tea-drinking British to make apologies about the Opium Wars, because they won instead of lost. It's quite ridiculous at this point.

Look at China map after Opium War, and China map after Japan's invasions.

Also, the Second Opium War ended in 1860. If there's anyone still alive who was there, they're not advertising themselves.

“Constant brainwashing since day one in the education and mass media systems has played a key role in building and keeping alive these strong anti-Japanese sentiments,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. “Larger segments of the Chinese society seem to really believe that the Japanese are still very militarist and nationalistic.”

Scapegoat is a word I learned related to Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and the Nazi's rise to power. Nazis conducted a very sophisticated and well developed advertising campaign to demonize and blame Jewish people for suffering felt after WWI . The result of this campaign changed many people's perceptions. The war time atrocities committed by Nazi Germany probably could not have happened without this campaign of hate.

Japan as an enemy to China has not existed for 70 years. So, the Chinese government's actions can only be called a campaign of hate.

As other posters have stated, everyday Chinese are bashing their government. So, one way for the Chinese government to create national unity and push attention away from their policies is to have a common enemy.

Is the Chinese government equivalent to a Nazi Germany? Only history will tell, but we should not ignore the historical similarities if there is an opportunity to stop another atrocity like that committed by Nazi Germany.

This will never end. And I get the beef China has with Japan. Id want to celebrate the ending of such a brutal period in my countries history too.They are owed a massive apology from Japan. You can run from your past but it always catches up with you.

Why is it so difficult just to say sorry?

I must admit that I am tired to hearing..."it was deeply regretful"...."We regret what happened"

That may mean sorry in Japanese thinking but to me that aint no apology. " Its regretful I hit your car buddy" No! "I'm sorry I hit your car buddy" goes someway to easing the situation.

Black and white with no wishy washy sugar coated language. "We are deeply sorry..."

And MEAN IT!....(...or appear to anyway ;)

Lets put this to bed next time Abe. (if you are still in power)

I'm just as tired hearing for the continued call for apologies from the Chinese considering they wont even apologise to their own victims of Chinese aggression.

But do the next apology right...and come clean about what happened...then the world will tell China to forgive the past. Because the way I see It.... (and maybe the world)

" So you just regret hitting my car buddy? That sounds like the thief who regretted getting caught! He is full of apologies now....only, Japan isn't???"

the china-gov will end up blaming their economic woes on japan. china-gov will say that they must spend so much money for weapons and for building new islands in order to defend itself from japanese aggression.

@ Peter Payne

History is written by the victors-the sun never set on Britains empire. This is well worth a watch the second quote by Hoover is eye opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLw0It06Ykc

I've known many, many Chinese people. And out of those many people, only one ever spoke or acted completely in line with what is espoused by The Communist Party. Many openly criticized the party or the way the country was operating or acted in opposition to the anti-Japanese propaganda espoused by state mouthpieces

This is my experience as well. I was shocked the first time I went to China and heard people talking bad about their government and its policies, and/or talking bad about the lack of transparency, and/or saying good stuff about Japan and Japanese products. It was entirely counter to what I had been led to believe of China and the Chinese. After I got back, I remember chatting with a friend I'd made over skype or something, and they were saying anti-government stuff. I asked "are you sure you can say that?" and his answer was something along the lines of "of course. We just can't announce it publicly".

Japan's best strategy for countering Chinese propaganda is to stop giving them ammunition.

So true.

aagonsr AUG. 31, 2015 - 10:42AM JST Hence the propaganda brain washing.

Meiyouwenti AUG. 31, 2015 - 11:57AM JST There is no future for any regime that brainwashes its youth

There is a kind of arrogance behind any implication that Chinese people are brainwashed. It implies that your rightness is so self-evident, that the only possible way anyone could disagree with you is if their ability to independently compute facts was taken away. In other words, if they were no-longer human. Calling Chinese people brainwashed simply because they don't see Japan the way you do is then just a roundabout way of implying they aren't fully human, which makes the claim itself a form of nationalist propaganda.

I've known many, many Chinese people. And out of those many people, only one ever spoke or acted completely in line with what is espoused by The Communist Party. Many openly criticized the party or the way the country was operating or acted in opposition to the anti-Japanese propaganda espoused by state mouthpieces, for example by celebrating aspects of Japanese culture. That one person who was in line with the party wasn't brainwashed, she simply had been given a lifetime of information opposing Japan and had no personal experience with Japan to counter-act it. She was perfectly capable of computing facts, its just her store of facts was very limited. You don't get people like that to change their views by writing them off as brainwashed or throwing a fit every time they say something you don't like, and you don't get them to change by attacking what they hold dear every time they say something you don't like. You get them to change by showing them facts that add to and refine what they already know until they finally have enough information to see the propaganda they've been fed for what it is.

That's why I said what I did in my earlier post. Japan's best strategy for countering Chinese propaganda is to stop giving them ammunition.

The real reason Japan became an aggressive nation in the first place was that they knew that if you didn't beat up on weaker nations, than you'd be colonized by France/England/the Netherlands/America and lose your national soul. They saw this in the Philippines, they saw this in China, they saw this in India. They saw the nation of Prussia erased from the globe after WWI. If you lived in a world where bully nations would make you part of their empire If you didn't become a bully first, you'd probably become pretty belligerent in a hurry. Yet Japan and ONLY Japan is taken to task for every act of colonialism ever, and no one expects the tea-drinking British to make apologies about the Opium Wars, because they won instead of lost. It's quite ridiculous at this point.

Meiyouwenti AUG. 31, 2015 - 11:57AM JST There is no future for any regime that brainwashes its youth and breeds hatred among its people by demonizing other countries or races. But they have no other choice; that's the only way they can resort to to distract domestic woes.

Then I find other stuff which I definitely would think is wrong if Germany still worships Hitler in a shrine or tries to rewrite the history books and erase the holocaust portion. Japan did not do a good job of separating itself from the WWII version to everyone, so the old flames are passing down instead of dying out along with the war and igniting some with new hatred as they see the actions of the right-winged revisionists vial.

Change a few words from this section and it could easily be talking about Japan.

Patriotic education is mandated in Chinese schools, and students often go on field trips to sites highlighting atrocities of the Japanese invaders.

The propaganda is intended to strengthen one-party rule, enlist solidarity against a common external boogeyman and distract the public from thorny domestic issues, Cabestan said.

“The party unites the Chinese society under its banner and uses nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiments as glue around it and a diversion from other problems,” he said. “The deepening economic difficulties have contributed and will contribute to intensifying the magnitude and decibels of the current anti-Japanese propaganda.”

What can Japan do?

Whitewash its history, change the textbooks and let media-censoring, right wing, history-deniers rule the country.

@ Kazuaki.... how should I say this.... that was my point. No matter how much propaganda the U.S. Govt and Hollywood fed me... I still did not believe them. You seem to feel the Chinese are not smart enough to see through the propaganda. Which is worrisome in itself.

There is no future for any regime that brainwashes its youth and breeds hatred among its people by demonizing other countries or races. But they have no other choice; that's the only way they can resort to to distract domestic woes.

japan is totally different country , with 70 years of peace how can anyone say otherwise ?

The Japanese are just as feudalistic as they were before the war. Look at the bullying in schools, and in companies for evidence. Look at how the government ignores the will of the people for more evidence. Look at people's inability to challenge authority for more evidence.

Their focus has changed over the past 70 years from war to business. The people are still the same though. That's what makes this push to shift back toward war so worrying.

Ralf Stinson, Conspiracies are exactly that conspiracies they are not facts or actual data, while i agree about what most of what you said, chances of japan repeating is 0, japan is totally different country , with 70 years of peace how can anyone say otherwise ?

China can't really do anything unless it has support of the people it lords over. So, if you want to do something, you have to convince the people you're lording over to support your ideals. Hence the propaganda brain washing. Eventually, they'll get so worked up through the propaganda that they'll actually think Japan is about to attack them and, in order to prevent that attack, they'll attack first under the guise of a "pre-emptive attack for defense". The average Chinese Joe Bob (or Ching Chong?) will honestly believe they're doing the right thing during the process, and even after it's all over. It's obvious what China wants. It wants Japan and all of it's resources.

Italy was a minor player in WWII. The main two were Germany and Japan. Both did some extremely bad actions that have no comparison in their magnitude of cruelty to humans to any other county. The difference is that Germany acknowledges it, and Japan does not. Germany has the death camps and it is against the law to say it did not happen. In German schools, the bad that Germany did is taught, so that they will not repeat it! That is not happening in Japan's schools with their history. I have yet to meet a Japanese who knows about what Unit 731 did in China! America's bad is pointed out in glaring detail, but Japanese bad goes unspoken. The Japanese bad is not talked about, so the chances of the Japanese repeating it is real and that scares other Asian nations. Please read "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy" by David Bergamini if you want some real insight.

China demonstrates once again what it's all about: noise and hot air. The government need to find a distraction for the impending collapse of the economy. The reality is China is way overblown, their military is more an image than iron, just like the industrial garbage they flood the world with.

The propaganda is intended to strengthen one-party rule, enlist solidarity against a common external boogeyman and distract the public from thorny domestic issues

that is one core of the issue. japan also seems unwilling to fully acknowledge what it was back then, nanking massacre, etc., let alone so-called comfort women.

if japan can be more willing to acknowledge such unanimously, i think that can ripple out to have positive impacts on chinese opinion -- who knows they might also have a more favorable opinion of democracy, and could ensure more domestic opposition toward communist rubbish propaganda.

but those seems far from reach with current political trends.

danalawton1@yahoo.comAUG. 31, 2015 - 08:56AM JST

The 26 year old Chinese teacher quoted is more self-aware than you. You may think that you are unaffected, but wiping to the point you hate the targets is not their goal. It is even undesirable because the population may then overreact.

The point is to subtly change the average receptivity of the population. Sooner or later, the targets will do something controversial, and how well the people react to the horrible motives you impute to them depends on your propaganda. If you, without really knowing the situation, automatically believe the Crimean election MUST be faked, or MH370 was a heinous Russian deliberate crime rather than what is at best an accident and at worst a false-flag operation, that's the propaganda working to alter your receptivity.

Get used to it Japan.... in the USA we watched countless movies and shows where the Russians were evil. But you know... the whole time I never fell for it and even today do not. The Russians, Chinese, or what have your are people too and just want to live in peace. It is their and our idiot politicians that need to believe they can lead us like we're sheep. Politicians are the evil... the average person just wants to live without hate or superiority.

Why so much anger, after so much time? It’s complicated.

And this is where the pro-Japan/anti-China bigots hurt Japan's chances to win in the long run. It's in the nature of governments to play up outsider threats to distract the public from internal failures- see also every time Japanese authorities hold a visa overstayer crack-down or every time an American Republican starts talking about building a wall along the Mexican border. People in Japan can't control that. It's out of our hands. But we can control how we respond.

Every time anyone in Japan dismisses a Chinese call for apology as insincere, every time anyone in Japan defends a Japanese politician who equivocates or gives an ambiguous response on Japan's wartime history, it plays straight into the Chinese propagandists' hands. Even if Abe had given a perfect apology speech (which he didn't), we all know that the story of him giving a donation to Yasukuni and his wife visiting there got reported at least 20 times to every one positive instance he would get acknowledged for giving the perfect apology. By now we've seen the pattern played out so many times, no politician has any excuse for being unaware- get lazy about Japan's wartime history, it's going to get attention by the Chinese government.

It's time to control the situation. People's personal pride is not more important than doing the right thing and ending the conflict. Tell the truth about the war. Be unafraid of acknowledging Japanese wrong doing. Representatives of the state have a duty to apologize unconditionally. Private citizens have a duty to learn the history and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Because no matter what the Chinese government says, Chinese people are still coming here. They want Japanese toilet seats and Japanese diapers. Every time someone on the Japanese side lashes out at China or dishonestly tries to white-wash Imperial history or defends Yasukuni, these Chinese visitors are given no reason to doubt the party line. If Japanese people were to confront their own history and unambiguously condemn their past however, those visitors would see Japan is not a militaristic, hateful society. And then when they finally return home, they would have to face questions about why the Chinese government tries to keep their attention on the past.

Japan really needs to do the right thing here, rather than just what feels good. The morally righteous choice and the geo-politically pragmatic choice are perfectly aligned. The Party wants Japan to lash back when China condemns them, to prove their criticism of Japan correct. Don't be stupid. Don't play their game.

Same old broken record being played again. Clearly the Chinese don't copy the rest of the modern 'sane' world when it comes to moving on.

Japan’s apologies are only "perceived to be less than wholehearted" because that is what has been drummed into them day in, day out.

I wonder how many Chinese see through the smokescreen?

As Ossan says, it's a shame to breed hate and distrust between people who have no reason to hate and distrust.

There's some very tiresome people the Chinese Commie Party.

China's leadership fans antipathy toward Japan

What else do you expect the billionaire politburo to do when the economy hits the skids?

"The propaganda is intended to strengthen one-party rule, enlist solidarity against a common external boogeyman and distract the public from thorny domestic issues"

If you came down straight to the comments, this sums up the everything.

Breeding hatred generation after generation.