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August 26, 2004
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Revionism
Philip Bowring's op-ed on Asia's relationship with Japan in the IHT is another staggering example of historical revisionism and confused clap-trap. He argues that Japan gets a bad rap in Asia, especially from Koreans and China that is not entirely deserved because some welcomed the Japanese with open arms in WW2 and earlier. He follows the Monty Python school: "What have the Romans ever done for us, except for education, roads, water, etc?" I'm sure many residents of Korea and Nanjing would have been happy to develop these things on their own without their Japanese overlords. Bowring amazingly compares Japan's lack of contrition to the West's lack of contrition for its "imperialism" in Asia. Finally he calls Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's new PM, to heel for daring to say Taiwan shouldn't aspire to independence. Bowring cites Singapore's history as the basis for this, even when modern geopolitical realities mean the Taiwan issue is far bigger and deadly than the Singaporean one in the 60s. But therein lies the problem: Bowring seems to have little grasp of reality. posted by Simon on 08.26.04 at 12:07 PM in the
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Well said. Time for another letter to the SCMP? posted by: Mr JT on 08.26.04 at 03:26 PM [permalink]I would JT, but it's the wrong paper and there doesn't seem much point. I don't know if you saw Bowring's laughable followup to my letter in his own letter to the editor over Darfur. Really he keeps embarassing himself. I need to stop reading his claptrap. posted by: Simon on 08.26.04 at 11:03 PM [permalink]Simon: I'm sure many residents of Korea and Nanjing would have been happy to develop these things on their own without their Japanese overlords. Without Japanese occupation, Korea would today be part of China, just like Tibet. And China's record of the treatment of its own people is far worse than that of the Japanese. No comparison at all. Read a little Chinese history, and you'll note that Nanjing-style massacres were not particularly unusual. Nanjing's problem was that it got liberated from the Japanese and suffered both KMT and Communist rule, on top of what it endured under the Japanese. posted by: Zhang Fei on 08.27.04 at 11:45 AM [permalink]It's a hypothetical so we'll never know. It's impossible to say that Korea would be part of China today if not for Japan. It's like saying France would be part of Germany if not for the UK and the USA. I accept China has done plenty of disgusting things to its own citizenry over the years and while Nanjing was horrid it was not exceptional. However I still cannot reconcile Mr Bowring's contention that many people in Asia welcomed Japan as liberators with any reading of history that I can find. If you have something then please point me to it and I'll gladly change my mind. posted by: Simon on 08.27.04 at 12:30 PM [permalink] |
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