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By CCTV reporter Hu Ting
According to Chinese experts, as political turmoil continues in Japan, hawkish political views are prevailing, and the country is moving to the right. This is not new. Japan has denied war crimes and continues to provoke its neighbors in territorial disputes.
Japan’s right wing forces have taken a series of actions to achieve their political purposes over the last decade.
When Junichiro Koizumi was Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006, he visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the war shrine which includes memorials of convicted Japanese war criminals. And a right-wing academic group, the History Textbook Reform Society approved a school history textbook that sanitised and justified the role of Japanese militarism in Asia in the first half of the 20th century.
In 2012, right-wing Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara launched his campaign to buy China’s Diaoyu Islands, leading to the nationalization of the islands by the Japanese government. The Diaoyu issue became a tool for Japanese right-wing forces to gain political capital and make themselves known.
Historically, China was the first to discover, name, and put the Diaoyu Islands under its jurisdition. In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, China placed the Diaoyu Islands within its coastal defense system. In 1895, the Qing court was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War and forced to cede part of China’s territory, including the Diaoyu islands, to Japan. Under the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation signed after the Second World War, the Diaoyu Islands were restored to China.
Japan’s purchase of the Diaoyu Islands is therefore a serious violation of China’s sovereignty. It is a denial of the outcome of the global Anti-Fascist War and a breach of post-war international order.
At the same time, to the north, Japan also has territorial dispute with Russia over the islands which Russia calls the Kuril Islands and Japan calls the Northern Territories. And to the west, Japan claims sovereignty over the islands known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea and the DPRK.
Japan has achieved nothing by provoking its neighbours. Instead, it is trapped by these disputes with three neighbours. Russia says it’s taking of the Kuril Islands is a result of the victory of the Second World War. South Korea has actual control of Dokdo, and is building a series of constructions there. And China’s marine surveillance vessels are continuing routine patrols and law enforcement activities in the territorial waters around the Diaoyu Islands.
中国公共新闻摘编：GAN JADE |
