Kyodo News: Last November, China protested strongly against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks concerning Taiwan. Since then, exchanges between Japan and China have stalled. Where does China want its relations with Japan to go this year?
Wang Yi: The future of China-Japan relations hinges on Japan’s choice.
Last year marked the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In such a special year, Japan should have deeply repented of the wrong path it chose, including its brutal invasion and colonization of Taiwan. Yet the current Japanese leader claimed that a Taiwan contingency could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, under which Japan may exercise its so-called “right of collective self-defense.” It’s well-known that the right of self-defense shall be invoked only when a country has come under armed attack. One would ask: Since Taiwan affairs are purely China’s internal affairs, what gives Japan the right to interfere with them? Why is Japan entitled to invoke self-defense if anything happens in China’s Taiwan region? Is exercising the “right of collective self-defense” simply a way to hollow out Japan’s pacifist Constitution, which renounces the right of belligerency? Given that Japanese militarists had used “survival-threatening situation” as a pretext for launching aggression, such rhetoric can only make the people in China and the rest of Asia alert and deeply worried: Where exactly is Japan headed?
This year also marks another significant 80th anniversary—that of the opening of the Tokyo Trials. Eighty years ago, judges from 11 countries commenced proceedings that would span two and a half years, reviewed a mountain of irrefutable evidence, and laid bare the innumerable crimes of Japanese militarists. The Tokyo Trials, a litmus test of humanity’s conscience, delivered historical justice. Eighty years on today, Japan is given another opportunity for serious soul-searching. As Chinese adages remind us, “History is a mirror that reflects the rise and fall of human affairs” and “The past, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future.” We hope the Japanese people will keep their eyes wide open and never allow anyone foolish enough to tread the same disastrous path today. A strong China with 1.4 billion people will never allow anyone to justify colonialism or reverse history’s verdict on aggression.