China exhibit portraying anti-Japan movement reflects ongoing feud

In Harbin, China there is an exhibit outlining the life of Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist, who over a century ago assassinated the Japanese politician, Hirobumi Ito (the first overseer of the Japanese colony in Korea).  This exhibit is just one of the many displays that is part of China’s anti-Japanese public relations campaign spread throughout home and abroad.  They demonstrate the ongoing tension between the two countries in which one of these issues relates specifically to the islands in the East China Sea (both sides want to take advantage of this row since it offers rich fishing grounds and potential oil reserves).  Lu Chao, a researcher at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in Sheyang, stated that previously, there haven’t really been any memorials for foreigners in Chinese territory, so the exhibit is quite out of the ordinary.  China’s public relations campaign has focused on what they argue as Japan’s invalid claims to these islands, “as well as the December visit by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to a controversial war shrine.”  Many Chinese ambassadors have also criticized Japan through letters written to newspapers.  In one of these letters, the Chinese ambassador in London compared Japan to Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels.  Thus, the Global Times, a government-run populist newspaper, compared the Japanese to the Nazis and further negative coverage prevails the news programs of the government channel.

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Amanda Ngo