China: Tokyo Olympics will only be success if Japan recognises war aggression
Editorial in Global Times focused on Beijing’s longstanding diplomatic rivalry with Tokyo
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Chinese state-run media offered Tokyo heavily qualified congratulations Monday for winning the right to host the 2020 Olympics, saying the event’s success would depend on Japan recognising its second world war aggression.
“Japan should learn how to behave,” the Global Times said in an editorial that focused mostly on Beijing’s longstanding diplomatic rivalry with Tokyo.
The paper lamented Japan’s “lousy job in reflecting its misdeeds in the second world war”, specifically pointing to visits by senior figures to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of the country’s war dead are enshrined including 14 Class A war criminals.
If visits continued, the editorial said, the world would reconsider whether “a country which has been paying high tribute to brutal war criminals for years is qualified to host such an event that advocates peace and harmony”.
The Olympics will produce some pressure for Japan to realise the importance of self-restraint
The paper’s news story on the 2020 decision said analysts were urging Japan “to adjust its attitude on history to reflect its appreciation for peace as implied in the Olympic Spirit”.
Beijing and Tokyo are at loggerheads over disputed territory in the East China Sea administered by Tokyo, which calls them the Senkaku islands, but claimed by Beijing, which knows them as the Diaoyus.
In the editorial, which appeared in both the newspaper’s Chinese and English editions, the Global Times added: “The Olympics will produce some pressure for Japan to realise the importance of self-restraint.”
Ties between the Asian giants have plunged in the last year, largely because of the ongoing territorial row, but their relationship remains heavily coloured by Japan’s brutal occupation of China before and during the second world war.
Beijing regularly accuses Tokyo of failing to atone for its imperialist past, while Japan says its neighbours use history as a diplomatic stick to beat it with.
Members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in Buenos Aires chose the Japanese capital over Istanbul after Madrid was eliminated, sparking celebrations in Tokyo.
The city previously hosted the Games in 1964.
