Update | China must retaliate for Japanese prime minister’s war shrine visit: official media
Official media warns China will become a ‘paper tiger’ if countermeasures against Japan are not taken over Yasukuni visit
China must take “excessive” counter-measures after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial war shrine visit, state-run media urged on Friday, reflecting the smouldering resentment among Chinese at its onetime invader.
China expressed its opposition and summoned Tokyo’s ambassador on Thursday to deliver a “strong reprimand” after Abe paid respects at the Yasukuni shrine.
The site honours several high-level officials executed for war crimes after the second world war, a reminder of Japan’s 20th century aggression and a source of bitterness for China and other Asian countries.
“People are getting tired of such futile ‘strong condemnations’,” said an editorial in the Global Times, a paper close to the ruling Communist Party that often strikes a nationalist tone.
“China needs to take appropriate, even slightly excessive countermeasures” or else “be seen as a ‘paper tiger’”, it warned.
“In the eyes of China, Abe, behaving like a political villain, is much like the terrorists and fascists on the commonly seen blacklists.”
It suggested barring high-profile Japanese politicians and other officials who went to the shrine from visiting China for five years.
Abe’s visit was the first by an incumbent Japanese prime minister to the inflammatory site since 2006, and came as tensions between the two Asian powers have escalated since last year over a territorial dispute in the East China Sea.
State-run media also excoriated Abe, who has sought to shore up Japan’s military.
“In the eyes of China, Abe, behaving like a political villain, is much like the terrorists and fascists on the commonly seen blacklists,” the Global Times said.
The China Daily called the visit “an intolerable insult” that had “slammed the door to dialogue shut”, adding that “Abe knew it would be an insult. But he does not care”.
It criticised the leader’s “sheer hypocrisy” and “nasty track record”, including “his denial of the aggressive nature of Japanese intrusions during WWII, his lack of remorse for Japan’s historical sins”.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Abe’s visit “a flagrant provocation against international justice and treads arbitrarily on humanity’s conscience”, a ministry statement said on Thursday.
China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, have important trading ties.
But conflict over the East China Sea islands known as the Diaoyus in China and the Senkakus in Japan have soured diplomatic relations since last year.
The controversial visit has been widely condemned around the world.
South Korea's Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Yoo Jin-ryong, called it a deplorable and anachronistic act that damaged ties between the two countries and summoned a top Japanese diplomat in Seoul to protest. He added: "We cannot withhold regret and anger over the visit."
China and South Korea have repeatedly expressed anger in the past over Japanese politicians’ visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal after World War Two are honoured along with those who died in battle.
The two countries have been especially touchy about visits to the shrine by serving Japanese prime ministers, and Abe is the first leader in office to pay homage at Yasukuni in the past seven years.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo issued a statement saying Japan’s leadership had “taken an action that will exacerbate tensions” with neighbours.
