ABSTRACT
Over the last decade or so, issues related to the history of Japan’s military invasion of China more than half a century ago have come to cast a huge cloud over the relations between the two Asian neighbours. The most recent high-level clashes over history issues took place during Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s state visit to Japan in late 1998. In his speech at Waseda University in Tokyo, after elaborating on age-old friendly exchanges between the two countries over many centuries, he went on to note that:
Unfortunately, Japan embarked on the path of militarism at the end of the 19th century. It occupied the Chinese territory of Taiwan after the First Sino-Japanese War. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Japan for a time occupied China’s Lushun [Port Arthur] and Dalian. Beginning from the 1930s, Japanese militarism launched full-scale war of aggression against China, causing China to suffer a casualty of 35 million people and property loss exceeding 600 billion US dollars. This war brought about profound national disaster to the Chinese people; it also caused much suffering to the Japanese people.1
