CHINA HAS expressed its anger over Japanese prime minister Taro Aso’s offering of a potted tree to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo, which Beijing sees as a symbol of Japanese wartime aggression and has long strained ties between Asia’s two biggest powers.
“The Chinese side has already expressed to the Japanese side through diplomatic channels our serious concern and dissatisfaction,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference, adding that the issue could have a “serious and negative influence” on bilateral relations.
Mr Aso is set to visit China for two days next week. The two Asian powers are trying to co-operate on a range of issues affecting the region, including financial slowdown and North Korea’s nuclear programme.
The Yasukuni Shrine honours 14 Japanese war criminals as well as 2.5 million war dead. Visits by Japanese leaders have long complicated relations between the two countries.
There is lingering resentment in China over Japan’s bloody occupation of parts of the country from 1931 to 1945. Relations between Japan and China were put under serious strain by regular visits to the shrine by former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi during his five years in office.
Mr Aso, who took office in September, has so far avoided visiting the shrine itself, but the current strain in ties began when he offered the shinto shrine a potted sakaki evergreen plant to mark the start of Japan’s three-day spring festival. “I expressed my appreciation and respect as a Japanese national to the people who sacrificed their precious lives for the country,” he said.
The Tokyo government has sought to play down the significance of the visit since then, saying Mr Aso made the gesture as a private individual.
In recent years, China has not been shy of asserting its growing strength within the region and of seeking on the international stage to match its economic muscle with real political clout.
Some of China’s neighbours are worried by its process of modernising its military, despite China’s protestations about its “peaceful rise” which bears no threat for its neighbours.
At a ceremony in Qingdao this week, China is celebrating its growing military confidence at sea, when anniversary celebrations for the founding of its navy climax with a show of the warships and submarines projecting its spreading power.
The fleet parade off the eastern port city marks 60 years since the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.