China has gone beyond merely criticizing the Japanese history textbooks it doesn't like, to actually seizing and confiscating them — at least the ones used by Japanese schools in China, that is. The Mainichi Daily News reports:
Chinese authorities in Dalian confiscated more than 120 educational books that a Japanese school imported from Japan, on the grounds that some books showed Taiwan as a separate country from mainland China, it was learned Tuesday.Of course, any such request might seem pointless, since China is governed by the threat of force, not the rule of law. It no more needs a specific legal ground to justify its actions than a baseball player needs a particular bat to hit the ball. But with China increasingly seen as a nascent superpower, any efforts to call attention to that fact are welcome, and that may be just what Hosoya has in mind.
Officials at the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said that it was the first time that one of the eight Japanese schools in China had had educational materials seized by Chinese authorities.
...In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoya said that the Japanese government might ask China to explain which law the authorities based their actions on when it confiscated the educational materials.
2 comments:
There is, however, good news in today's WSJ. Check out the first column on the front page. "Japan Redefines its Relationship with China."
Encouraging news.
Posted by RFTR
So guys: as japan is still heavily influenced by America, do you see this as a confrontation between japan and other east asian nations (it seems to be arguing with pretty much everyone...), or a proxy confrontation between two super powers, which will in future increasingly rival eachother for resources etc?
Posted by TT
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