China commentator urges tougher line against Japan

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China should prepare for enduring conflict with Japan and embrace nationalism as a source of social unity, a senior commentator with the ruling Communist Party daily wrote against a backdrop of steadily worsening bilateral ties.

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The unusually forceful comments in a new magazine came at a time of renewed sparring between Beijing, long critical of Japan's perceived failure to own up to wartime atrocities, and Tokyo -- this time over the suicide of a Japanese diplomat in Shanghai in May 2004.

Japan says the diplomat killed himself after he was blackmailed by Chinese security agents over a liaison with a prostitute. On Friday, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, said Japan was "deliberately vilifying China's image."

Lin Zhibo, a deputy director of the commentary department at the People's Daily, the ruling party mouthpiece, writes the conflict between the two countries is about their future status, as well as their past.

"The fundamental conflict between China and Japan now is that China is rising, and Japan does not want to see China rise. This conflict is long-term and cannot be altered by the will of the Chinese people," writes Lin.

On Tuesday, the Global Times, a newspaper owned by the People's Daily, said the new quarrel had "cast a shadow over any improvement and progress in Chinese-Japanese relations this year."

Lin's comments appeared in a new Chinese journal, China and World Affairs, issued by Tsinghua University in late 2005. The journal is directed at China's policy-making elite.

Lin argues that the conflict between China and Japan is set to deepen. The two countries' economies are increasingly competing for export markets and energy supplies, and past Chinese attempts to foster friendship have failed, he writes.

"Our one-sided efforts for friendship have been totally useless," Lin writes. "Chinese-Japanese relations will be better handled only if China's stance is tougher than now."

Lin is a well-known proponent of hawkish policies toward Japan. In 2003 he was prominent in criticizing another, more liberal People's Daily commentator, Ma Licheng, who argued for friendlier relations with Tokyo.

QUOTING MENCIUS

Ma and other Chinese commentators warned of dangers from growing popular nationalism largely directed against Japan. But Lin, in his latest paper, says that friction with Japan may even have benefits for China and enlists Mencius, the Confucian sage who lived 2,300 years ago, to boost his argument.

"It's not a totally bad thing to have an enemy country," Lin writes. "Mencius said 'Without foes and external threats a state will surely perish'. Having an enemy country and external peril forces us to strengthen ourselves."

Nationalism may be the only belief that can maintain China's unity and stability in a time of tumultuous change, writes Lin, seeming to discount the holding power of the official Marxist ideology.

"Today in China an ideological vacuum is emerging," writes Lin, citing rapid economic growth, social fragmentation and external pressures. "What can China rely on for cohesion? I believe that apart from nationalism, there is no other recourse."

In April 2005, Chinese cities saw fervent, occasionally violent, demonstrations against Japan. More than one million Chinese signed an on-line petition denouncing Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

China especially objects to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where major war criminals are interred, and has denounced a textbook it says whitewashes Japan's invasion and occupation of much of China from 1931 to 1945.

More recently, the two countries have had angry exchanges over disputed boundaries in the East China Sea and China's growing military budget -- which Japan says lacks "transparency."

Lin says such friction is sure to continue as China's influence expands.

"China wants to rise. If that's the goal we've settled on, then we can't be a sheep. We've got to be either a wolf or a wolf-hunter."
 
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