IF AN ALIEN from Mars were to read only Chinese newspapers during a visit to planet Earth, he could be forgiven for believing that Japan was this planet’s evil empire and Junichiro Koizumi its most evil man. Beijing has repeatedly blamed Koizumi for damaging relations between the two Asian powers and, even though Koizumi is stepping down as prime minister in September, the Chinese press hasn’t let up a bit in its verbal assault against him.
Among the “sins” Koizumi has committed, first among them is his annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, a pilgrimage which the Chinese press derisively describes as “worshipping ghosts.” It’s hardly surprising that Chinese news stories and commentary on this issue are so biased and inaccurate–they are the centerpiece of Beijing’s propaganda campaign against the pro-American prime minister.
In a dispatch from Heilongjiang province on the eve of the 69th anniversary of the July 7 Incident, the Chinese state-owned New China News Agency (Xinhua) reported on chemical weapons left in the northeastern province by the Japanese army during the War. The story says that “what needs to be more swiftly cleaned up are not only the chemical weapons abandoned in China, but the thought of militarism left over in the heads of a minority of Japanese rightists.” It goes on to claim that visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Japan’s prime minister are even more poisonous than the chemical weapons buried underground. For the Chinese media, on the subject of Japan it seems everything is related to, and nothing is worse than, this vestige of Japan’s imperial history.
The Chinese press isn’t above making up facts either. In a Xinhua dispatch from Tokyo in June, a correspondent asserted that, “[I]n fact, the majority of Japanese nationals and Japanese opinions both oppose Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine.” By ignoring the fact that Japanese society is split over the issue, Xinhua presents to the Chinese people a false picture of Koizumi going against his own nation.
When the Yasukuni Shrine recently started printing its brochures in Chinese, Korean, and English, the Chinese press was apoplectic. New Express Daily sarcastically commented on June 13 that “[W]hat the Yasukuni Shrine is doing isn’t all bad. At least, it alerts people in the world that the threat from Japan’s militarism is still here . . .” Legal Daily ran an even more imaginative editorial on June 18 claiming that “this kind of so-called internationalized promotion . . . [goes] way beyond the internal affairs of a tiny museum or the boundary of Japan’s domestic affairs.” For a regime which consistently characterizes international criticism of its human rights abuses as illegitimate interference in the state’s internal affairs, Beijing shows little reluctance to meddle in the internal affairs of its democratic neighbor.
Mr. Koizumi’s recent visit to the United States was also a target of the Chinese press. People’s Daily, in a story published on July 3, declared that Koizumi’s position vis-à-vis the president was undermined by his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine–seemingly blind to the fact that the Shrine issue was a non-issue at the “sayonara summit.” Citing a story in Time Magazine, the report claimed that American opinion, too, was turning against Koizumi on the matter. While sparse criticisms did appear, in the New York Times for example, People’s Daily grossly exaggerated the extent of American attention to the matter. Most Americans are unaware of the controversy surrounding the Shrine, and those that are do not seem deeply troubled by the prime minister’s visits.
Of course, one can hardly expect the Chinese press to give Koizumi fair treatment, so tightly controlled by the regime as it is, but it is still shocking to read comparisons of Koizumi to Adolf Hitler. In an article published in Global Times on June 30, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Science wrote that “Koizumi fever” is much like the frenzy that gripped Nazi Germany, with both leaders showing great skill at inflaming political issues. Koizumi’s “negative legacy,” the article warned, is a dead end which his successor shouldn’t follow.
The most ironic thing I have read so far, however, comes from Beijing Daily, which examined the role of media in the current state of Sino-Japanese relation. A professor of international studies at Tsinghua University commended the Chinese media for doing such a good job covering the issues. “It’s absolutely legitimate and necessary for the Chinese media to report accurately the wrong words and deeds of Japan’s leaders and the back-pedaling of Japan’s China policy, and expose and criticize Japan’s right-wing forces,” he wrote. However, the author claimed the Japanese media had failed to accurately report the Chinese viewpoint, namely that right-wing media in Japan have been manufacturing anti-China opinion under the banner of press freedom. The Chinese have a saying for such hypocrisy–“a thief is crying out loud to catch a thief!”
Kin-ming Liu, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association and general manager of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, is a Washington-based columnist.
