Eric's Beijing Diary

I was glad to see a discussion on Dialogue this morning about the difficult relationship between China and Japan. The two guests were a professor from Remin University, and a Fulbright scholar from Seika University in Kyoto. The scholar was very open about expressing his concern that the student protests in China had become violent in some instances. But he was also critical of the Japanese government for it's refusal to apologize. He also pointed out that the Moriyama statement a few years ago was made my a prime minister from the opposition party during the only two years since World War II that the dominant party in Japan was not in power. But he also made the point that there was lots of debate in Japan about this issue, and that the actions of the government by no means represented the views of the entire country.

I believe that the Japanese government should apologize, but I also believe that China should do a better job of focussing on the actions of the Mombusho (Japanese Ministry of Education), which are clearly wrong, rather than allowing the issue to be generalized to the Japanese people.