China calls Japan plan for drilling 'a violation'

International Herald Tribune ^ | July 16, 2005 | Chris Buckley

[Righty_McRight]

BEIJING A festering territorial dispute between China and Japan threatened to escalate on Friday after Beijing condemned Tokyo's decision to allow a Japanese company to explore for gas in the East China Sea.

"This act by Japan is a grave provocation and violation of China's sovereign rights," a Chinese Foreign Ministry official in charge of Asian affairs, Cui Tiankai, told the Japanese ambassador to China, Chihiro Atsumi, who had been summoned to receive the official protest, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo also lodged a formal protest with the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Xinhua reported.

China and Japan both claim rights to the 400-square-kilometer, or 150-square-mile, belt of the East China Sea, which lies between China and the Japanese island of Okinawa. The seabed there may hold rich natural gas reserves, and both countries have been vying for control of the area.

[coconutt2000]

Did we ever remove the treaty obligation that restricted Japan's military?

If not, we should.

[rlmorel]

I believe it is a self-imposed sanction in their constitution, which they can change if desired.

We may need the Japanese at some point in the future (or they may need us)

[the invisib1e hand]

violate China's rights...nuke the US....

I think they're coming unglued over there...

[contemplator]

The world loves to criticise the U.S. for how it exercises it's strength as a super power. If the trend is in fact that China will be one of the next centuries super powers, the world is in for rude awakening when China shows how horrible and dictatorial one can really be, and by comparison how good they truly have it now with the U.S. at the helm.

[cripplecreek]

Nothing much changes does it.


This Traficant speech could have been written today but it was written during the Clinton misadministration.

WHEN WILL THE WHITE HOUSE WISE UP?
October 28, 1997
Mr. Speaker, China's President is in America. President Jiang told the press China will not tolerate any interference by the U.S. Government. In fact, President Jiang sent over a list of irritant subjects he will not even discuss, Members.

No. 1, he will not even talk about trade, even though it is going to hit $60 billion. No. 2, no, he will not talk about human rights. No. 3, he does not even want to hear about the last Presidential election. Do not mention John Huang, Charlie Trie. Stay out, Uncle Sam. And guess what? The White House said, `Don't worry, this is no big deal.'

Beam me up. The White House will not wise up until there is a full-blown rice paddy on the east lawn of the White House. Somebody is smoking dope.

[dljordan]

"I believe it is a self-imposed sanction in their constitution, which they can change if desired. "

I think they're considering changing it.

[dljordan]

"I think they're coming unglued over there..."

The entire freakin' world is coming unglued and seems to be spiraling out of control.

[WoofDog123]

"If the trend is in fact that China will be one of the next centuries super powers, the world is in for rude awakening when China shows how horrible and dictatorial one can really be, and by comparison how good they truly have it now with the U.S. at the helm."

Very well stated.

[eamadia]

Did we ever remove the treaty obligation that restricted Japan's military? If not, we should.

do you think japan should occupy north-east of china again or bomb another what harbor? that "treaty obligation" was in the first for protecting USA. if japan's military power is capable of invading china, will they do that again, i do not know, but i am sure they wont follow america like they do now, maybe, Greater Global Co-prosperity Sphere is an option.

[the invisib1e hand]

bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you alert.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

So...you went ashore at Iwo ?

[rlmorel]

I lived in Japan and the Phillipines when I was a kid...I loved Japan, great place, nice people, etc.

I loved the Phillipines too, but they remember all too well the occupation by Japan, as do many countries in the Far East.

The Japanese are a puzzling people. Capable of great beauty and appreciation of beautiful things, but seemingly capable of such cruelty.

[KenmcG414]

Time for Japan to stop being a sleeping giant and militarize. A militarized Japan would neutralize China's backyard.

[Wiz]

ping

[CodeRouge]

The Japanese are a puzzling people. Capable of great beauty and appreciation of beautiful things, but seemingly capable of such cruelty.

They are even more puzzling in achieving technical supremacy and leaving their own diplomacy in mess at the same time.

Don't forget that before US investment started to shower China, Japan had been the major feeding hand of Beijing regime. They virtually build up the entire nation's infrastructure: freeway and sewage systems, airports, with their no-interest Yen loan. Now this very hand is getting bitten, too.

[CodeRouge]

do you think japan should occupy north-east of china again or bomb another what harbor?

I don't think Japan would even bother to think about Manchu again. Leave that rust belt to China.

Look, you have to admit, Japan has changed itself completely, for the better. China has been under the same communist regime for over 50 years. Maybe they are changing, too - to the more fascist side!

[eamadia]

Look, you have to admit, Japan has changed itself completely, for the better.

to some extent, yes

China has been under the same communist regime for over 50 years.

absolutely yes

Maybe they are changing, too - to the more fascist side!

you have to know the difference between CCP and chinese people. by years of brain-wash, some of chinese people are radical and nationalistic, but one thing you must have seen is that no matter how angry those people were against japan or usa, they blasted no building of japan or usa, killed no one. the dangerousest thing they have done against japan or usa was throw stones and fruits or vegetable somethings onto the embassies and that happened only when CCP encouraged or planned them. why? because they knew they were in the minority, and they were quite aware of that they were CCP's puppets, and they would get punished by their own master if they went too far, and they got punished even they did go far.

or was it because chinese people were cowardly? NO! they fought WITH STONES, TILES, STICKS for more than one week against 14 army corpses, 350 thousand soldiers, including infantries, artilleries, armored forces, airborne forces even missile forces.

you might have seen the man on Times

have you seen the man on this?

most of chinese people do not support CCP, but they cannot say that as CCP is ruling China with mean instrumentalities. chinese people are not a threat to the world, taiwan people are also chinese people, are they a threat to the world? no, neither mainland people, the day when chinese people can say what they want to say, you will find out. essentially, CCP is a thread to everyone even to themselves (you must know the purgings of CCP years ago). fortunately, today's CCP do not have enough military power to make big trouble. they just verbally threaten to wage a war, will they do it? as i know, they have called for a war for many times for many many years. i even heard that a major general threatened to use nuke. CCP needs some more years before they could wage a war or nuke somewhere. maybe they need another more 50 years, but I believe they do not have another 50 years. of couse, if you like to listen the nationalists, no body can stop you, they have the permits to speak, they can keep speaking until your eardrums get hurt.

do the couple love CCP who sent tanks over their heads? can the couple confront CCP who sent tanks over their heads? (the picture tells you). collapse of CCP, we will see it, but we have to wait.

[kevin_in_so_cal]

Didn't you know? The history of the Tiananmen Square massacre is a "myth." (rolls eyes) Who could write such idiocy?


The Tiananmen Square massacre myth

By GREGORY CLARK

China's recent ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of former leader Deng Xiaoping have given the Tiananmen massacre myth yet another lease of life. Most media commentators, the BBC especially, have rehashed the standard condemnation of Deng as a hardliner who instigated a massacre of harmless demonstrating students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Why someone who had suffered cruelly at the hands of Cultural Revolution hardliners and who did so much to push China on the path of liberalization should himself become a hardliner is not explained. Even less does anyone seem to have felt any need to check out just what actually happened in Tiananmen in 1989. Eyewitness accounts that say there was no massacre have been conveniently ignored. Blatantly anti-Beijing propaganda accounts have been unquestioningly accepted. Fortunately we now have a source whose sober impartiality cannot possibly be doubted, namely the de-classified reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at the time (see Google under Tiananmen, Document 30 especially).

They confirm that there was no massacre in the square, that almost all the students who had been demonstrating there for two weeks had left the square quietly in the early hours of June 4, and that the real incident was panicky fighting triggered by crowds attacking troops, initially unarmed, as they headed for the square on June 3.

In the process a still indefinite number of troops, students and civilians were killed and many military vehicles were torched. Call it a mini civil war if you like, with troops eventually getting the upper hand over unarmed insurgents. But that is not a deliberate massacre of innocent students.

Curiously, the photo that most media use to illustrate the alleged student massacre shows a row of blazing army vehicles, some with crews trapped inside, in a long avenue that clearly is not part of Tiananmen Square. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy material speaks of troops only finally entering the square after some students attacked and killed a soldier in a vehicle at the entrance.

True, the Communist Party leadership under Deng later rounded up and imposed severe jail terms on student leaders involved in the Tiananmen demonstrations. But the same leadership had tried in vain to offer concessions to the students when they were camped in the square, and some of the student leaders have since admitted they were foolish to reject those concessions. Troops were only sent to remove the students when things were getting out of hand and the square needed to be cleaned up in advance of a Beijing visit by Soviet leader, Mikail Gorbachev.

Leader Li Peng later admitted that the real problem had been Beijing's inexperience in crowd control. Lacking the devices and trained police squads commonly used in the West for such control, it had had to rely on inexperienced troops.

If Beijing is to be faulted, it is for creating the conditions that encouraged the June 3 fighting outside the square. Years of insane Cultural Revolution economic policies and political oppression had created a sullen and impoverished proletariat only too willing to seize any excuse for antiregime violence. The attempt to remove the students from Tiananmen gave them that excuse.

Surprisingly, the media moralists so upset over the nonexistent Tiananmen massacre have little to say about the very brutal massacres of student demonstrators in Mexico (1968) and Thailand (1973). There, no effort was made to negotiate with or tolerate the students. They were rounded up immediately and killed in the hundreds. Yet both governments continued to enjoy Western approval. Meanwhile Beijing has had to suffer more than a decade of Western odium and sanctions for a non-massacre.

The New York Times, which should know better, recently ran an article by David Brooks opposing a EU move to lift some of these sanctions. He writes blandly of Beijing killing 3,000 students in the square. No sources are quoted. It is taken for granted that a massacre occurred.

This is not the first time Beijing has been condemned for something that did not happen. Perhaps the worst example was the Sino-Indian 1962 frontier war. As China desk officer in Canberra's foreign affairs bureaucracy at the time, I had to watch on impotently as the world, including Canberra, accused China of making an unprovoked attack on India when the evidence in front of me proved clearly that it was India that had first attacked China, across even the furthermost line of control demanded by India. It would be more than a decade before that evidence finally found the light of day. In the meantime, the myth of Chinese aggressiveness would be used to justify a raft of Western atrocities in Asia, the Vietnam intervention especially.

Another favorite of the anti-Beijing media has been alleged genocide in Tibet. This, when Tibetans, along with other minority peoples, have been allowed to have as many children as they wanted and Chinese have been subject to Beijing's one-child policies.

The latest sledgehammer aimed against Beijing, and a major reason for perpetuating the Tiananmen myth, is a claimed lack of Western-style political freedom. Whether Sinitic-culture nations with collective leaderships able to claim moral or revolutionary legitimacy -- Singapore is a good example -- should have to abide by Western-imposed standards of political conduct is debatable, particularly given the political circus we are seeing now in the U.S. But that aside, has anyone thought seriously of what would happen if China had our system of rival political parties competing for votes? First victim would be Beijing's one-child policy. The next victim would be the rest of the world as it tried to cope with the resource shortages and pollution created by a booming Chinese population. China is already destined to become a leading economic and political force in the world. The Western media should try harder to take it seriously.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and vice president of Akita International University. A translation of this article will appear on www.gregoryclark.net

The Japan Times: Sept. 15, 2004