Chinese propaganda war over past hurts

READERS of the weekend’s Chinese newspapers found a belated scoop on the front pages.

Chinese President Xi Jinping smiles during a meeting with South Korean National Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, July 4, 2014.(AP Photo/Ahn Yung-joon, Pool)

READERS of the weekend’s Chinese newspapers found a belated scoop on the front pages: the war crimes confessions of General Fujita Shigeru of the 59th Division of the imperial Japanese army.

“Shot dead 12 Chinese people including one woman in Luoyang, Henan,” read one extract. “Massacred all inhabitants of 50 households in a village ... used gas shells during the attack in Maqushan the same day,” said another.

Anyone puzzled by the timing of such revelations from seven decades ago need only have looked at the columns of denunciation hurled at Japan, which last week took a small but symbolic step away from its post-war pacifist constitution.

In China, the propaganda war is in full swing. A daily atrocity is promised for the public as the state media publish confessions they claim were written by Japanese war criminals captured in 1945.

Samples from archives on the Chinese state television website included, “I murdered 1280 Chinese peasants by shooting, bayoneting, slashing and burying alive”, and, “I brutally killed 235 Chinese seeking refuge, cutting open the bellies of pregnant women among them”.

The cause of China’s ire? Last week, the cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a historic change to “reinterpret” article 9 of the nation’s 1947 constitution to allow the nation’s “self-defence forces” more freedom of action.

In practice, the changes are modest. Japanese forces could now fight on the side of a US warship under attack. They could shoot down a North Korean missile aimed at a foreign target. And they could use their weapons for UN peacekeeping operations.

In China, this handed the Communist Party ammunition in its campaign to depict Abe, a right-wing conservative, as an unrepentant militarist.

The decision was bound to raise tension between China and Japan, whose warplanes and ships are in a dangerous stand-off around disputed islands in the East China Sea. A hard-nosed explanation for it came with an assessment of future Japanese weaknesses quoting Japanese military sources published in Tokyo last week by the Nikkei news service. It predicted the balance of air power between Japan and China could start tilting in Beijing’s favour in 2018.

At present, the Japanese air “team” of jet fighters, airborne warning and control aircraft and tanker planes could defeat China by better tactics, training and technology, a source claimed. But China is already flying 670 “fourth-generation-plus” jet fighters, outnumbering Japan’s 260 jet fighters. The picture darkens further for Japan in 2018 when analysts expect China to deploy its first stealth fighter.

The article also gave unusual insights into how Japan might fight a war with China over the disputed Senkaku Islands, known to China as the Diaoyu. “China could try to capture the Senkaku Islands by dispatching militia members disguised as fishermen, landing on the islands, and then have its maritime police and military forces arrive in the name of protecting its nationals,” it said.

Japanese officials fear the US would use the end of Japanese administration on the islands to excuse itself from intervention. In a narrow interpretation of a treaty, the US is only obliged to help while the islands remain formally administered by Japan. “China is well aware of the divisions among US officials over how to respond,” the Nikkei article said.

To prevent this scenario, Japan plans to send submarines and amphibious troops backed by spy drones to the area and to reinforce bases on Okinawa and other islands. The big picture is that China officially spends $140 billion on defence compared with Japan’s $50bn. The Chinese budget has doubled since 2008 and will rise by 12 per cent this year, while Japan can afford just a 2.8 per cent increase.

Time is not on Japan’s side. Xi Jinping, China’s President, used a state visit to South Korea last week to stir up memories of Japanese war crimes, seeking to undermine the US alliance with both countries. Nobody, however, could accuse the Chinese leader of dwelling too much on recent history. Instead he chose to remind the Koreans of their joint resistance to another Japanese invasion — 400 years ago.

The Sunday Times