Beijing, Tokyo Will Try to Strengthen Relations : Despite 43 Years of Peace, China’s WWII Memories Are Painful

The peasant man leaned on the railing of suburban Beijing’s ancient Marco Polo Bridge and spoke of a half-century-old battle as if it had happened yesterday.

“The Japanese devils killed the most people over there, at that railway bridge,” Yao Banmo said.

“After they occupied Beijing, we had to obey their orders,” he added, explaining that he was then 7 years old. “We had to start studying Japanese. But nobody wanted to be a slave who had lost his country.”

Forty-three years after the end of World War II, which in Asia began on a full scale with that 1937 attack at the Marco Polo Bridge, the Chinese people still carry vivid images of “the War of Resistance Against Japan.”

These memories, as well as attitudes created by ancient and recent contacts, shape the backdrop to ties between the two East Asian powers as they seek a future of cooperation.

Investment Safeguards

Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita plans a six-day visit to China beginning Thursday during which he and his Chinese hosts will try to strengthen the ties. The two sides are expected to agree on a six-year loan package of up to $6.2 billion to assist China’s modernization program and also to reach an accord on safeguards for Japanese investment.

“The economic relationship between Japan and China should develop very well,” said Wang Xiaoxian, deputy director of the China-Japan Friendship Assn. “China has abundant resources and labor, while Japan lacks resources. China lacks technology, and Japan is technologically very developed. And we are near each other. . . . We hope Prime Minister Takeshita’s visit can promote the economic and cultural progress of both countries.”

But attitudes about the past still inject flashes of bitterness into the relationship. The Chinese cannot forget the war, and they object vehemently when, as happens from time to time, some Japanese conservatives make statements minimizing the aggression committed against China.

“We won’t forget this history, because we suffered too much,” Wang explained. “Everyone has--among their family and friends--people who were hurt in the war. But the past can be a teacher for the future. For China and Japan ever to fight again would be a disaster.”

The Chinese estimate that 9,325,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians died between July, 1937, and August, 1945, as a result of the Japanese invasion and occupation.

Hope and Apprehension

Many ordinary Chinese now look at Japan with a mixture of hope and apprehension, strongly influenced by complex feelings about Tokyo’s past aggression and present economic strength.

“Japanese are narrow-minded but very arrogant, and they sometimes seem presumptuous, thinking that they can dominate Asia,” said a Chinese man who declined to give his name. “Now that Japan has become highly developed, there are some Japanese who feel superior, and some have even started to deny that they invaded other countries. These are things we do not like.”

Li Yuheng, a 55-year-old movie theater employee, said China and Japan are destined to fight again.

“Japan is poor in resources and overpopulated, and it needs more markets,” he said. “Someday Japan again will invade us.”

Li insisted, however, that while Chinese people “furiously detest Japanese militarism” they “have good feelings toward the Japanese people.”

Ma Changsen, a young peasant man, said he knows of the war mostly from textbooks and films.

“When we see movies and see Japanese soldiers killing Chinese, we really hate the Japanese,” Ma said. “We always think they have no human feelings. . . . But the Japanese people, just like the Chinese people, were victims of the war. It was the Japanese warlords who invaded China.”

Distinction Emphasized

The Marxist view of history propagated in Chinese schools and the media emphasizes this distinction between the people of Japan and their wartime government. This analysis, absorbed by many people, and the passage of years deflects anger away from individual Japanese. But it cannot render the war irrelevant.

“Because of this education, when we have individual contacts with Chinese people, there is rarely any mention of the past or complaining about it,” commented Satoshi Imai, director of the Japanese Business Club in Beijing.

“They blame the war on the militarists, but they do remind people of it every year with publication of pictures and articles, and they built a war memorial exhibition hall (completed in 1987),” he added. “I wonder what kind of inner feelings the Chinese who see all this have.”

A Japanese businessman who spoke on condition that he not be identified said he believes that by keeping Japan’s invasion fresh in mind, the Chinese achieve a sort of psychological balance with Japan.

“Technologically and economically, the gap between the two countries has become so great,” he said. “China feels great pressure from the strength of Japan. It seems that to balance that, they must keep reminding Japan of the bad things it did, and also not let their own people forget.”

But some Chinese believe that other factors in the relationship provide a firm basis for an especially strong and lasting friendship between China and Japan.

“In my opinion, relations between Japanese and Chinese should be very close--closer than between Chinese and Americans,” said Xu Yongxian, 49, a high school teacher. “We have the same cultural roots, and our race is the same. We also share the same religion. This is still relevant--Buddhism is an important part of China’s history, and it still exists in the hearts of the Chinese people.”

Rapidly growing economic ties between the two countries also shape attitudes. Japanese products are in heavy demand in China, prompting both admiration for Japan’s economic prowess and resentment at what some view as Japanese domination of Chinese markets.

The Japanese are often viewed as hard-working and technically proficient.

Bian Liqiang, director of the Japanese Issues Research Center at Beijing University, told how impressed he was by a janitor with whom he became friends while visiting Japan.

‘Try to Do It Well’

“One day there was a meeting at the university, and he was there doing some service work,” Bian recalled. “I wanted to chat with him, but he said, ‘I’m working now, let’s talk after the meeting.’ I was deeply impressed with the serious working attitude of the Japanese. Whatever their job may be, they try to do it well.”

Liu Jun, 24, a purchasing agent for a collective enterprise, dismissed the war as only of secondary importance.

“Young people hope Japan can help us, because their technology is very advanced,” Liu said. “Japan can help us through trade, through government aid--any route. . . .”

A 36-year-old Chinese man who works for a Japanese trading company, and who asked not to be identified, said Chinese should adopt the Japan work ethic.

“In a Japanese company, working efficiency is very high,” he said. “They’re very serious, and they emphasize winning the trust of customers. If Chinese would work like Japanese, China could develop much more quickly.”

This man said he began studying Japanese a decade ago because his mother spoke it. His interest thus was an indirect result of Japan’s 1931 occupation of Manchuria, the northeastern part of China, for his mother learned the language growing up in this area.

“The Japanese were promoting education aimed at enslavement, so people who were wealthy enough to afford education had to study in Japanese,” he said.

His family, however, was far from pro-Japanese.

“My mother’s father was an aide to Ma Zhanshan (then acting governor and military leader of Heilongjiang Province, who resisted the Japanese aggression),” he said. “Ma Zhanshan became an anti-Japanese hero, and my grandfather became a hero too. He was buried alive by the Japanese devils.”

But the man’s view of Japanese businessmen was favorable.

“Because their physical appearance, language, habits and customs are close to ours, the Japanese can do business here more successfully than Westerners,” he said.

A middle-aged Japanese businessman, who asked not to be named, said that being Japanese carries some advantages as well as liabilities in terms of the attitudes that the Chinese are likely to bring to personal relationships.

“If I’m dealing with older people, I sometimes wonder what they think of the war, but they never say anything about it,” he said. “Young Chinese people think that we have built up our country by our own strong efforts. They respect what Japan has done over the past 40 years, especially young people between 20 and 30--I have a very good relationship with them. “