China won't apologize to Japan over protests

updated 12:38 a.m. ET April 18, 2005

SHANGHAI, China - China rebuffed demands for an apology on Sunday after rioters damaged Japanese diplomatic missions in protests over Japan’s wartime aggression and its bid for a U.N. Security Council seat, instead saying Tokyo had “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people.

The two Asian powers traded blame over the aggression even as Chinese authorities allowed new protests in at least six cities.

“The Chinese government has never done anything that wronged the Japanese people,” Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told his Japanese counterpart, who flew to Beijing to protest the violence.

Instead, Li said, Japan was to blame for “a series of things that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” over issues such as relations with rival Taiwan and “the subject of history” — a reference to new Japanese history textbooks that critics say minimize Tokyo’s World War II-era atrocities.

Many Chinese believe Japan has never truly shown remorse for offenses committed during its invasion of China, including germ warfare experiments and sex slavery of thousands of women.

Lack of apology ‘very unfortunate’
Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura arrived with relations between the two nations at their lowest point in decades.

Ill will has been brewing over gas resources in disputed seas and Tokyo’s campaign to join China, Britain, France, Russia and the United States as a permanent member of an expanded U.N. Security Council.

Machimura called China’s failure to apologize “very unfortunate,” Japan’s Kyodo News agency reported.

“China’s top leaders seem not to understand the huge shock that the Japanese public has felt over this issue,” Machimura was quoted as saying.

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