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China-Japan relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Provocative Japanese actions risk plunging Asia into peril: PLA Daily

Chinese military mouthpiece’s commentary comes as Beijing marks 88th anniversary of Nanking massacre amid full-blown diplomatic crisis with Tokyo

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People attend the national memorial ceremony honouring the victims of the Nanking massacre of 1937 in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on December 13, 2024. Photo: Getty Images
Jane Caiin Beijing

As Beijing prepared to mark the 88th anniversary of the Nanking massacre, China’s military mouthpiece warned on Friday that provocative actions by right-wing Japanese politicians risked plunging Asia into peril.

PLA Daily published the warning in a commentary the day before sirens will sound out across Nanjing, the capital of eastern Jiangsu province, at 10.01am during national commemorations led by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council.

According to China’s official estimate, more than 300,000 civilians and soldiers were killed in the six weeks after Japanese troops entered Nanking, now called Nanjing, on December 13, 1937. Japan disputes the number of fatalities.

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In the commentary titled “Never Allow the Tragedies of History to Repeat Themselves”, author Xu Yizhen took aim at Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks to Japan’s parliament last month.
In those remarks, Takaichi suggested that a Taiwan contingency could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, a statement that the PLA Daily commentary described as a blatant historical inversion that revived the spectre of militarism.
Sino-Japanese ties have deteriorated since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November 7 remarks suggesting that a Taiwan contingency could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Photo: Reuters
Sino-Japanese ties have deteriorated since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November 7 remarks suggesting that a Taiwan contingency could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Photo: Reuters

Xu said the Japanese leader had “openly turned back the wheel of history: first by absurdly claiming that a Taiwan contingency could constitute an existential crisis for Japan and then by trying to stir up” the notion of the island’s undetermined status.

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