As much as I know about how hundreds of thousands of Chinese were

brutally tortured and killed in the course of Japanese atrocities

during World War II, and as much as I would agree that the Japanese do

have a problem in fully admitting that they really did a lot of awful

things in the course of a particularly gruesome war all over Asia 60

years ago, China has a problem.

Let me refer to you to a historical story which happened during during

the Warring States period. The king of Yue gets captured by the Wu

state and gets imprisoned and humiliated for 20 years. After that, he

returns to Yue, builds up his state, and then, in memory of the

bitterness and humiliation of his treatement under the Wu kingdom, he

comes in with his army to annihilate the whole country.

And that, pretty much sums up the attitude of China to the rest of the

world today. It is a zero sum game in which "The winner becomes the

king, and the loser becomes the prisoner".

Moreover in the long course of Chinese history, there has been little

evidence to suggest that the China would treat weaker opponents with

magninamity. As popular

Think about it. Suppose China eventually does reach the superpower

status of America- and my feeling is that it can probably do it. What

would be its most likely fundamental policy in relation to the rest of

the world then? Would it be "Let's use this power to help bring peace

and prosperity to the rest of the world?" Or would it be "Aha! We are

very powerful now. Now is the time to wreak revenge on Japan, on

America, on Britain, on France- heck just about everybody who has made

us lose face in the past for over 200 years of our history! Haha!"

The evidence at the protests sadly, does suggest the latter. Think about it. We hear breathtakingly petty justifications for the boycott

of Japanese goods- because apparently there is a 20 billion dollar

yuan surplus in favour of Japan. Never mind the economics of

comparative advantage for now. The problem is attitude.

The Chinese would do well to remember the story of another people,

with whom they are connected in mysterious ways. Remember 1999? You

know, the year when the United States bombed your embassy in Belgrade

due to faulty intellegence (thanks to the Iraq war, we now all know

that these bumbling fools were probably actually teling the truth).

If you recall, that intervention was in favour of Kosovars who were

getting ethinically cleansed by Serbians.

And among the other justifications that ultra-nationalist Serbs used

to justify killing Kosovars (who mostly happened to be muslims) was an

almost long forgotten battle in 1389 when they got whacked by Turkish

invaders.

I can very well assure young Chinese citizens that if they fail to put

their nationalist feelings in perspective, the end result will be a

great many lives lost and a great amount of blood shed. It will be

genocide and ethnic cleansing on a scale the world has never seen

before. You will be using the patriotic poetry of Chinese heroes like

Yue Fei to eat the meat and drink the blood of other human beings.

Given, as everyone would agree, the several thousand year history of

Chinese civilisation, the only question that remains is "What

grivience shall the Chinese nurse first? "

I can assure you Chinese citizens too, that it is not just the

Japanese who are disturbed by Chinese behaviour- it is just about

every nationality in the world whose ancestors have, at some point or

another, offended the sensibilities of China.

You are no longer proving anything. You are merely scaring the whole world.