{"id":104,"date":"2015-12-30T21:13:30","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T21:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/?p=104"},"modified":"2016-01-12T19:08:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T19:08:03","slug":"china-shows-skepticism-on-japans-comfort-women-apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"China Shows Skepticism on Japan\u2019s \u2018Comfort Women\u2019 Apology (The Wall Street Journal)"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL<\/a><\/h1>\n

Beijing reiterates call for Tokyo to make amends for wartime transgressions after Japan-South Korea deal<\/h4>\n
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By Chun Han Wong<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

BEIJING\u2014South Korea and Japan\u2019s move to resolve a decades-old dispute over Korean wartime sex slaves drew a frosty response from China, where officials and citizens alike have long criticized Tokyo\u2019s stance on its military transgressions during World War II.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s foreign ministry on Tuesday repeated its call for Japan to face up to its wartime history, while state media dismissed the deal as geopolitical puppetry by U.S. officials seeking to contain Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the Second World War, Japanese militarism forcefully recruited \u2018comfort women\u2019 across China,\u201d said spokesman Lu Kang, using a common euphemism for the wartime sex slaves. \u201cThey have committed a grave crime. We urge the Japanese side to take seriously the concerns of the relevant parties and deal properly with the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seoul and Tokyo reached an agreement <\/a>over the issue on Monday. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the use of Korean women in Japanese military brothels, some of whom were teenagers, and provided $8.3 million in government funds for a foundation to help the women. With this accord, both countries said they consider the issue \u201cfinally and irreversibly\u201d resolved.<\/p>\n

In China, many social-media users denounced Tokyo for what they saw as lack of contrition over similar historical wrongdoings on the mainland.<\/p>\n

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Japan and South Korea reached an accord as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the treatment of Korean women used as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in World War II. The U.S. has welcomed it, but China has offered a frosty response. Photo: AP<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cYou can compensate South Korean comfort women, but when it comes to Chinese comfort women, you renege on your debts,\u201d Chinese writer Liu Xinda wrote on his verified Weibo microblog. \u201cThey are all comfort women; on what grounds do you draw distinctions between them?\u201d<\/p>\n

The official comments echo China\u2019s long-standing rhetoric against Japan, which intensified in 2012 over a territorial dispute between the two over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. That led to anti-Japanese demonstrations in a number of Chinese cities, including in front of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. Japan has recently boosted military spending in part to bolster its readiness in the region.<\/p>\n

Relations between the countries were further strained when Mr. Abe became prime minister in late 2012 and pushed for a more muscular regional stance. Mr. Abe\u2019s visit to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo\u2014which honors Japan\u2019s war dead\u2014in late 2013, and subsequent visits by members of his cabinet, have also drawn angry responses from China.<\/p>\n

But tensions have since eased slightly, as Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> shifted focus on territorial disputes with other neighbors in the South China Sea and Mr. Abe has taken some conciliatory steps. The two met in April in Indonesia at a summit of Asian and African leaders.<\/p>\n

Beijing and Tokyo have endured often-fractious ties since the end of World War II, during and before which Japan held large parts of the mainland in a brutal occupation. At the time, Japanese troops forced many Chinese women into sexual slavery, a practice that was replicated across other Japanese-occupied territories. China\u2019s antagonism also stems from atrocities ranging from the 1937 Nanjing massacre to medical experiments conducted on Chinese prisoners by Japan\u2019s notorious Unit 731.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s communist leaders have long relied on stoking nationalism to help shore up the party\u2019s political legitimacy and further foreign-policy goals. Japan is the most regular target of such publicity campaigns, most recently in September, when Beijing held a grand military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

Bilateral ties have shown signs of thawing over the past year, after a meeting between Messrs. Xi and Abe in late 2014 paved the way for further high-level interactions, said Akio Takahara, an expert on Chinese politics at Tokyo University.<\/p>\n

Even so, Beijing has often dismissed Mr. Abe\u2019s efforts to repair ties as insincere, citing his efforts to revise Japan\u2019s pacifist constitution and strengthen its military.<\/p>\n

Such skepticism surfaced again Tuesday, when Mr. Lu, the Chinese foreign-ministry spokesman, said, \u201cWe are looking forward to seeing whether the Japanese side will do what it has promised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese state media also raised doubts about Tokyo\u2019s sincerity and highlighted anger over the deal among some South Korean victims.<\/p>\n

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South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met in Seoul on Monday to discuss the agreement. Getty Images<\/em><\/div>\n
Chinese and Malayan girls forcibly taken by the Japanese to work as ‘comfort girls’ for the troops photographed in 1945. South Korean …<\/div>\n
In January 1992, victims of Japanese sexual enslavement and civic groups held what turned into a weekly rally in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Yonhap News\/NEWSCOM\/Zuma Press<\/em><\/div>\n
The opening ceremony of the memorial for comfort women was held in Nanjing, China, on Dec. 1. Li Xiang\/XINHUA\/Zuma Press<\/em><\/div>\n
Flowers on a memorial wall commemorating former South and North Korean comfort women at the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul. Kim Kyung-Hoon\/Reuters<\/em><\/div>\n
Protestors at the statue of a South Korean teenage girl called the “peace monument” during the weekly demonstration near the Japanese embassy in Seoul on Nov. 11. Jung Yeon-Je\/Agence France-Presse\/Getty Images<\/em><\/div>\n
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met in Seoul on Monday to discuss the agreement. Getty Images<\/em><\/div>\n
Chinese and Malayan girls forcibly taken by the Japanese to work as ‘comfort girls’ for the troops photographed in 1945. South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers on Monday announced an agreement to resolve the issue of \u2018comfort women,\u2019 including an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a support fund for the victims. Imperial War Museum<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The official Xinhua News Agency questioned why Mr. Abe\u2019s wife on Monday announced a recent visit to Yasukuni. \u201cTaking into consideration the mixed nature of signals sent out by Tokyo in recent days, as well as Abe\u2019s undeniable history of prevarication and obfuscation and habit for historical revisionism, people have good reason to remain doubtful,\u201d it said in a Tuesday commentary.<\/p>\n

In its midday news broadcast on Tuesday, official broadcaster China Central Television aired footage showing former Korean sex slaves protesting against the accord.<\/p>\n

On Chinese social media, many users decried the accord as the fruit of cynical geopolitical maneuvering by Japan and the U.S. They say the deal helps Tokyo and Washington\u2019s bid to use Seoul as a buffer against China\u2019s rising clout in the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Japan-South Korea accord on comfort women, we can clearly see the shadows of the U.S. flitting in the background,\u201d wrote a user on the Weibo microblogging service. U.S. officials have said they have encouraged closer ties between the two, and praised Monday\u2019s deal as beneficial for regional peace and stability.<\/p>\n

Scholars say Monday\u2019s agreement suggests Seoul may be easing back from recent efforts to foster closer ties with Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Korea started to look to China because it wanted to rebuild its stagnant economy,\u201d and gain leverage over North Korea through Beijing\u2019s influence over Pyongyang, said Satoshi Amako, a China expert at Waseda University in Tokyo. Since then, \u201cthe Chinese economy started to slow down and it became unclear whether South Korea could benefit as much as it expected…[while] China\u2019s relations with North Korean have been deteriorating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global Times, a Chinese nationalistic tabloid run by the official Communist Party\u2019s People\u2019s Daily, dismissed the speculation <\/a>that Monday\u2019s accord would help Tokyo win diplomatic leverage against Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch analysis is not unreasonable, but exaggerates the strategic significance of the deal,\u201d Global Times said in a Tuesday editorial. \u201cSouth Korea is not a key factor in the Sino-Japanese relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe comfort women deal <\/a>doesn\u2019t mean the South Korean society has endorsed the attitude of the Japanese government over history, and it in no way impairs the legitimacy of China\u2019s demand for Japan to introspect on the history of aggression,\u201d said the newspaper, which carried a similarly worded editorial in its Chinese-language edition.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Felicia Sonmez<\/a> in Beijing and Chieko Tsuneoka in Tokyo contributed to this article.<\/p>\n

Write to <\/strong>Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Beijing reiterates call for Tokyo to make amends for wartime transgressions after Japan-South Korea deal By Chun Han Wong Updated Dec. 29, 2015 10:44 a.m. ET BEIJING\u2014South Korea and Japan\u2019s move to resolve a decades-old dispute …<\/p>\n

China Shows Skepticism on Japan\u2019s \u2018Comfort Women\u2019 Apology (The Wall Street Journal)<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comfortwomenpetition.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}