i find it suspicious and a bit suprised that spontaneous demonstrations have occured in China involving thousands of people, given the Communist Party's consistent record of quelling protests. i feel its naive to say that this is a dispute about reconciling historical acts. it happened almost 70 years ago and Japan has apologised 21 one times apparently (albiet sanitised by ultranational Japanese), and I won't be suprised if they have gone unacknowledged. also, history books are almost always skewed in favour of portraying the existing government in a good light - you don't see China publicising its invasion of Tibet nor is it widely known in America that historical hero Columbus and his crew committed nothing short of genocide of native Americans.

China's benefit is two-fold. Chinese people are not known to be patriotic (only until recently, as people start to become proud of her economic achievements, but much less the case in the pre-Deng era). if anti-Japanese sentiment can be used to unite the Chinese people to back the government (and its political agenda), so much the better.

secondly (and probably why such protests have been timed now), it also gives China public support and thus extra leverage and media coverage over issues such as the contended oil fields and Japan's aspirations for a seat on the UN permanent security council. so, setting aside other dimensions, if Japan hypothetically did apologise in full (wouldn't count on it - I believe Japan would think that China is being unreasonable and manipulative), would this not give Japan the upper hand?

in the long term, it is not hard to see a power struggle between the two increasingly entangled nations. China is becoming more and more bold, with its increasing economic clout in the region, and is determined to use this to influence Japan. nonetheless, China would be unwise to let this jeapordise the commercial interdependence between the two nations...

my first blog on politics! it might sound like i regurgitated some of it, but i'm just taking the views of others and expanding on it. an interesting topic... with many more interesting views here.