President Barack Obama recently was selected as the worst US president since World War II in a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Connecticut). I must say, however, that if the poll had been conducted for the world’s worst leaders instead of only those in the US, it’s more than likely that President Park Geun-hye of South Korea would have gotten the nod.

　　　Park’s policy of seeking closer ties with—and greater dependence on—China while seemingly striving to make South Korea a mature democracy based on the respect of basic human rights and the rule of law is contradictory. However one views it, because Beijing cherishes diametrically opposite values, one is not convinced that her policy toward Beijing will make South Koreans happy—or contribute to Seoul’s national interests.

　　　In the Japanese translation of her autobiography Adversity Refines Me & Hope Moves Me (Wisdom House Inc., Seoul; 2007) published shortly before she took office in February 2013, Ms. Park stated: “Whatever (my fate) may be, I am determined to accept it in a dignified manner and overcome any difficulties.” Despite her vow, she has yet to show any backbone in dealing with the difficulties her nation is faced with, continuously bowing to the simplistic demands of public opinion. While being criticized as fundamentally “pro-Japan” because of the strong ties her late father, President Park Chung-hee, had with Japan, Ms. Park is sadly unable to recognize that such criticism is groundless, constituting part of the North’s efforts to manipulate the public opinion of her country. Further, she is unable to take a broader view of the geopolitical realities her nation is faced with.

　　　In anyone’s eyes, what has been taking place in China since the Xi Jinping regime was inaugurated on November 15th, 2012, is very ugly. On July 1st, the biggest ever rally in Hong Kong’s history was held, attracting 510,000 pro-democracy demonstrators. Following the rally, many of the demonstrators staged an all-night sit-in in the central part of the city, demanding universal suffrage and less political intervention by the Beijing government in the affairs of Hong Kong under the “one-state, two-system” format. The Xi administration arrested 551 Hong Kong residents who took part in the sit-in, including five leaders of the Civil Human Rights Front that organized the rally.

　　　Meanwhile, resistance by Uyghurs appears to never stop. On May 22nd, a massive explosion ripped through a section of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, on the heels of a similar incident in late April, killing 39 Han Chinese and injuring nearly 100. In retaliation, the Xi administration immediately declared that it would take “extremely tough measures” and employ “extraordinary methods” to put Uyghurs under even more control for the next year.

Extremely Tough Measures of Suppression  

　　　However, resistance by Uyghurs has since intensified, leading to the attack on June 20th of a police station in Hotan County, a western province of Xinjiang, killing five policemen. Then in Kashgar City on June 21st, 13 Uyghur assailants were killed and three police officers injured when the Uyghurs drove a car into a police station, setting off explosives.

　　　The measures taken by the Chinese government to suppress the Uyghurs are indeed “extremely tough.” On June 16th, the government executed 13 Uyghur as “terrorists.” On the same day, three Uyghurs were sentenced to death and five others given guilty verdicts, including penal servitude for life, for allegedly having participated in terrorist activities. In just a month since late May, 380 Uyghurs belonging to 32 dissident groups were detained in Xinjiang. However, such measures not only failed to erase—but in fact contributed to worsening the grudge that minority groups hold against the Chinese government.

　　　The Chinese government targets not only members of China’s varied ethnic groups but also Han Chinese intellectuals. Prominent human rights lawyers Pu Zhinquing of Beijing and Tang Jinling of Guangzhou were detained on May 6th and June 16th, respectively. Then on June 23rd, well-known Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, who had been detained since January on charges of separatism, was formally arrested. Li Fangping, a lawyer who was allowed to see Tohti, told the press that his client was shackled and had gone on a 10-day hunger strike protesting inhumane treatment, losing 16 kilograms.

　　　The coercive measures implemented in exercising control over anyone who acts in defiance of rule by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) have been applied to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) as well—a major think tank run by the Chinese government. After inspecting CASS, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) accused the think tank on June 16th of having been “infiltrated by foreign forces,” declaring that CASS researchers would be denied “special treatment” and that they must follow the “thinking of the party leadership” from now on.

　　　In other words, the CPC has warned this elite Chinese intellectual group to never engage in objective thinking, when its mission should be to contribute to mapping out China’s national strategy through wide-ranging unbiased research and analysis on matters such as the current international geopolitical situation, history, and the economy. How can China’s future prospects be bright when the CPC confines the nation’s leading think tank, which should be committed to always engaging in the most objective thinking possible, to the narrow framework of the CPC’s ideology?

　　　And yet, despite these inhumane policies, Park cheerfully follows the lead of the Xi Jinping administration. Xi visited Seoul July 3-4, repeatedly blasting Japan and urging Park to jointly stage a ceremony next year marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the wartime anti-Japanese resistance movements waged by both Chinese and Koreans. On her part, Park went to great lengths to maintain the mood of a “special relationship” throughout Xi’s visit, apparently blind to Xi’s ploy to use South Korea as a convenient tool for its new war on history against Japan.

　　　Xi, determined to intensify state control over dissidents at all costs, delivered an address at Seoul National University on July 4th, stressing that China “will always safeguard peace, promote cooperation, and keep an open mind to learning.” Xi also declared that China has always followed the principles of “goodwill, sincerity, reciprocity, and tolerance.” Nothing has been heard from the Korean side questioning the validity of these statements.

　　　In their summit meeting over two days, Xi and Park criticized Japan’s decision to exercise its right to collective self-defense, expanding its international security role. The Chinese leader had already instructed China’s Internet media to “criticize (the Japanese decision) and intensify the public opinion campaign against Japan.” However, such Chinese steps were well within Japan’s expectations. Historically speaking, China has repeatedly shown a propensity for bashing Japan for every conceivable reason whenever it has felt Japan is getting stronger.

The World Now Is on Japan’s Side

　　　For example, in the 1980s when the then leaders of Japan and the US—Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and President Ronald Reagan—succeeded in developing excellent bilateral relations and forged ahead with plans to defend vital sea lanes by comparing Japan to an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific, China started criticizing Japanese leaders for visiting Yasukuni Shrine. It was about this time (1985) that the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum was inaugurated.

　　　Then in the 1990s, when then Prime Minister Ryotaro Hashimoto reviewed the US-Japan Defense Guidelines with President Bill Clinton to strengthen the US-Japan alliance, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin attempted to stand in the way. Visiting Pearl Harbor on the first leg of his state visit to the US, Jiang had this to say during an address: “The Chinese people and the American people once fought shoulder to shoulder against fascist aggression and safeguarded world peace together with other peoples of the world.” The foundation for China’s anti-Japanese education was laid down at the time under the pretext of patriotic education.

　　　And now, as Abe is trying to reinvigorate Japan, breaking it away from the abnormal strictures of its postwar period and moving it on to the footing of a conventional independent democracy, the Xi administration is again carrying out a desperate attack on Japan, trying once more to raise the war—which ended nearly 70 years ago—as an issue.

　　　To most members of the international community, that the gap between what China says and what it actually does is impossible to close is embarrassingly evident. The more Beijing tries to gloss over the contradictions in its foreign and security policies with flowery words, the more sharply are they brought into relief. On July 7th, Chairman Xi and Prime Minister Li Keqiang delivered addresses, marking the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, denouncing Japan’s war-time history and stressing the importance of “learning from the past.” However, both Xi and Li had it wrong; instead of preaching to Japan, they should have sincerely reflected on China’s own record of blatant fabrication of historical facts and admonished themselves to “learn from the past.”

　　　Fully aware of how the Chinese fabricate history, the world is now on Japan’s side. That Prime Minister Abe was given a warm welcome on his visits abroad following the cabinet’s decision allowing Japan to exercise its right to collective self-defense, as reactions in Australia and New Zealand richly demonstrated, is proof of the world’s approval of Japan’s policies based on active pacifism. China’s aversion to Japan is merely the reverse side of Beijing’s alarm about the acceptance by the international community of the legitimacy of the Japanese stance. In this vein, Japan should have greater confidence in what it is setting out to achieve.

(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 615 in the July 17, 2014 issue of The Weekly Shincho)