November 17, 2004

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Yellow Submarine

China now officially "regrets" its nuclear submarine's intrusion into Japanese waters last week, blaming it on a technical mishap. Which doesn't bode well for both the submarine's captain and the PLA's navy but is great news for Taiwan.

But what is it about the word "sorry" that is so hard for Asia governments? China very deliberately chose the word regret, and Japan deliberately didn't push the matter any further, accepting the apology as is. Being sorry in Asia is not easy. Japan has expressed "regret" over its WW2 actions but China has never accepted that as enough. This time around Japan is demonstrating to China that regret can be the same as sorry. It won't wash, but no doubt the point has been noted.

posted by Simon on 11.17.04 at 10:01 AM in the




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Simon's China and East Asia Highlights: 30th Nov 2004
Excerpt: The following is a digest of highlights from the past month's Asia by Blog series over at simonworld.mu.nu. The round-up has four key areas of focus: China, Taiwan & Hong Kong (Politics, Economy & lifestyle, History sport & culture, Information), Korea...
Weblog: Winds of Change.NET
Tracked: November 30, 2004 02:13 PM


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