BEIJING, April 20 (UPI) -- An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs elaborated China's position of history as a one-way mirror in a briefing Wednesday on Sino-Japanese relations.
A spokesperson from the International Press Center operated by the ministry told reporters that attribution for the background briefing was "an official from the Chinese foreign ministry."
In his opening remarks, the official said: "The issue concerning bilateral relations has become an issue of great attention not only in various circles of China and Japan, but neighboring countries and other nations worldwide.
"Such close attention is for good reason: China and Japan are each others' important and close neighbors, therefore there is ample reason for our two countries to attract a lot of attention not only for geopolitical reasons, but the stakes involved in this regard," he added.
"China-Japan relations have progressed to a stage that we have very close exchanges and interactions in almost every field and by looking back at the history of interwoven love and hate relationship we can see ties between these two countries are really very complicated," the official said.
He divided Sino-Japanese history into three parts: ancient contacts, unfortunate parts of modern history and relations since normalized ties were established in 1972.
"We say that between China and Japan, there is a history of interactions of over 2,000 years, so if we look back to ancient times we can say the Japanese are one of the peoples who have learned the most from the culture of China," the official said.
The official declared: "In modern history Japan was one of the external peoples that inflicted the worst scourge on the Chinese." The war of aggression staged by militarists of Japan at that time caused 35 million casualties ... a very unfortunate time in Sino-Japanese history."
He listed three documents, the Sino-Japanese communiqué of 1972, their 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, plus the Joint Declaration of 1998 as "providing not only the development of relations, but also explicit principles for how to handle the issue of history and the Taiwan question."
They will remain an important political foundation guiding the healthy and stable development of China-Japan relations in the future," he noted.
The official said the handling of shared history was the "most important" negative factor "dragging and constraining" Sino-Japanese ties.
While stating "the Chinese nation will never forget such history," the foreign ministry official added: "China has tried to be forward looking, and since the 1950s formulated a historical policy and overall relations with Japan."
He said this policy was succinctly summarized as "taking history as a mirror and looking forward."
China continuously uses this catchphrase to badger Japan over revisionist history textbooks, whenever Japanese leaders go to the Yakusuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japanese war dead, the Diaoyu/Senkaku island dispute, delimitation of economic zones in the East China Sea, a visit to Japan by former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui, and other irritants in their bilateral relations.
During the question and answer part of the briefing, United Press International asked the official to respond to critics who charge "taking history as a mirror and looking forward" is hypocritical by the Chinese government, given its own history after 1949 under the Communist regime, when millions died from political persecution, famine and war.
What does China see when it looks in the mirror of history? UPI asked.
"I don't think taking history as a mirror and looking to the future is anything that is hypocritical. Talking about taking history as a mirror, we are not talking about any particular period, rather history as a whole," the foreign ministry representative responded.
He observed: "The unfortunate period of Sino-Japanese relations is indeed a part of history which inflicted untold sufferings on the Chinese nation; if we choose to forget that part of history; it would not be a normal development in relations between us.
"In whatever we need to do, we need to ensure we start from a basis of some preconditions" the official said.
"Without yesterday you cannot have today, let alone tomorrow," he added.
"If you call it hypocritical, then why do people take the trouble to have so many commemorations on the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Second World War?"
The official concluded his remarks by switching from 20th-century tragedies to sage advice given by a prime minister in the seventh century during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD).
The foreign ministry official recounted a saying by Wei Zheng (580-643), who told emperor Taizong (600-649) "that if you look in a bronze mirror, you can see if you're properly dressed; if you take history as a mirror, you can know the rise and fall of countries; and if you take people as a mirror, you can know what you can gain and what you can lose."
"The principle here is very simple: if one forgets history, then of course his or her future is nothing," the foreign ministry official said.
His answer to UPI's question also cast one awful reflection: Chinese officialdom plays the aggrieved victim unable to forget or forgive transgressions by foreigners yet cannot face the horrific things it has done to itself.
