The cause for the sour ties between China and Japan was that
Japan's leader fails to face historical realities, manifested by
successive visits to the Yasukuni shrine, Premier Wen
Jiabao said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday
evening.
Wen made the remarks after attending the 9th China-ASEAN and
ASEAN Plus China, Japan and Republic of Korea Summit, and the first
East Asia Summit, at which he delivered a major speech calling for
joint efforts to build common prosperity in East Asia.
Asked by a Japanese reporter whether the sour ties between China
and Japan would affect the summits, Wen said that a meeting among
Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders was originally planned
as part of the series of ASEAN meetings, but it has been postponed
because the atmosphere and foundation for the meeting is not
good.
Wen said the responsibility for the postponement did not lie
with the Chinese.
The Japanese aggression against China during the WWII was a
tremendous disaster for the Chinese people, with casualties
amounting to as many as 35 million, Wen said.
China has consistently seen the Yasukuni shrine that honors
Japan's Class A war criminals from World War II as a symbol of
Japan's past militarism. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi
Junichiro's visits to the shrine greatly hurt the feelings of the
Chinese people, the Korean people and the peoples of other Asian
countries.
China and Japan are neighbors, and the Chinese government has
held that developing long-term and stable Chinese-Japanese ties is
in conformity with the fundamental interests of the two peoples,
and is "our unswerving policy," Wen said.
"This policy has never been changed even in the most difficult
times," Wen said.
"The key to the issue now is the Japanese leader must go with
the trend of the world, take history as a mirror, orient toward the
future and take practical actions so as not to disturb and sabotage
the Chinese-Japanese ties," Wen said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2005)