China, Japan slug it out in the world's press
Abe's controversial visit to shrine sets off round of accusations in world's newspapers
China and Japan are engaged in a war of words that is lighting up editorial pages around the world as Beijing takes aim at a recent visit by Japan's leader to a controversial war shrine and Tokyo answers back.
Japan's ambassador to the United States accused China of a global propaganda campaign that portrays Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as glorifying Japan's militaristic past.
"It is not Japan that most of Asia and the international community worry about; it is China," Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae wrote in The Washington Post.
The duelling opinion pieces, appearing in newspapers around the world, come as both nations have been criticised for recent actions: China's declaration of an air defence zone over a disputed area of the East China Sea and Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted second world war criminals are among the many enshrined.
Chinese diplomats have been especially blunt. Ambassadors have accused Abe of "a gross trampling upon world peace and human conscience" on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, having "put the international community on high alert" in Australia and doing something akin to "laying a wreath at Hitler's bunker" in Madagascar.
But the most headline-grabbing exchange was in Britain's Daily Telegraph, where the ambassadors of China and Japan compared each other's nations to the evil Lord Voldemort of the Harry Potter books.