A Digression on Taiwanese Managers

April 20, 2004

Abiola Lapite (Foreign Dispatches) and I agree Andrés Gentry has very good essay on the issue between China and Japan. Again, allow me to reiterate: I have a deep and abiding affection for the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese as the result of close and memorable friendships in my own personal life. This affair has therefore cut me to the quick.

Without resorting to the mistaken trope that the CCP controls everything in this country, let's just say I find it doubtful that the recent protests could have happened without either the help of the government (as in Beijing where city buses helpfully brought students back to their campuses after they shook their fists and threw bottles and rocks at the Japanese Embassy) or the tacit acceptance of them (as in Chengdu's first riot where the police were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about preventing the destruction of private property). Somewhere between organization and acceptance probably best describes the CCP's role in the riots and it was probably a slightly different mix in each city. Such is life in a soft authoritarian state.

...So returning to Japan, in 2001, during the last approval of history textbooks, when given the choice, how many schools chose the right-wing textbook? Judging from all of the riots and protests over its newest edition you would think it was a mainstream book, one taught in a lot if not all Japanese schools, one that reflected mainstream Japanese thought on the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, 0.3% of schools chose the inflammatory textbook in 2001

...Japan's prime ministers and its emperor have apologised to China for the brutal conduct of the occupying Japanese army in the 1930s-1940s on no fewer than 17 occasions since the two countries restored diplomatic relations in 1972. Seven years ago, Japan also made a written apology for its harsh colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, in 1910-45. (cited from The Economist—JRM

...So here is part of the story, in my opinion. The need for ever more apologies has less to do (and now, after 17 times, I would argue nothing to do) with making amends for the past and significantly more to do with asserting Chinese dominance. Any time Japan decides to behave as a "normal" nation, such as its current attempt to get a seat on the UN Security Council (not an abnormal request considering it's the world's second biggest economy), an outcry ensues that a nation that doesn't apologize for its past evil actions doesn't deserve to be heard on the international stage.

...It is risible in the extreme for a man [Chinese PM Wen Jiabao] who went down to Tiananmen to beg students to leave, who then spent the next few years rehabilitating himself by essentially renouncing himself, and who thereby achieved one of the top positions in the country, to be talking about "facing up to history squarely". This sort of personal history, shall we say, affects his credibility on the issue.

...The current tensions between China and Japan are more about the collision between an unfree society and a free one then about the revisions of a single history textbook not used by 99.61% of Japanese schools. I respectfully but strongly disagree with Fons that the focus should be on Japan. I think the focus should be on the frustrations, distortions, and instability of a society that is unable to freely discuss all too many topics, that has not developed the tolerance for unpleasant points of view that a free society must, by definition, protect. The focus should not be on a society that, after 60 years of public discussion of its past, continues to take deeply to heart the horrible lessons of its past and which enjoys an incredible consensus (to underline again, 99.61% of schools do not use the rightist textbook) that deeply shameful, evil events took place under the banner of the rising sun.