japan and china

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/04/17/japan-china-050417.html

i have no idea if this story is getting any play overseas but tensions between japan and china have come to a boil recently. for the past two or three weeks theres been a bunch of protests in china with violence directed towards japanese people in china.

the chinese have 2 beefs:

a) japan should be denied a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. They cite atrocities committed by Japanese troops against the Chinese during the Second World War, including massacres that killed between 50,000 and 300,000 people

b) they're also enraged by new Japanese textbooks that appear to downplay the atrocities

when the japanese government demanded that the chinese government apologize for the violence, beijing refused, which has sparked a furor here in the japanese press.

im sorry, but this is china at its worst. regarding point b, alot of the texts are meant for japanese high school kids and arent meant to give the whole story. i remember canadian texts glossed over tons of events, and dont even start to mention what goes on in american texts.

regarding point a, japanese leaders have apologized repeatedly for the past 20 years about ww2 atrocities (fyi: if you want to know how bad those were, and they were horrific, read "the rape of nanking: the forgotten holocaust of ww2" by iris chang...shocking stuff). theyve paid compensation, every leader has apologized, even the current pm koizumi. theres not much more they can do. and to be honest, when dealing with a regime as corrupt and oppressive as chinas, maybe theres not much more they should do until theres some actual reform over there.