Japanese Boy Stabbed to Death: China Is Making Things Worse

Editorial

15:17 JST, September 26, 2024

It is unbelievable that even though the life of a Japanese boy was taken in China, not only has Beijing refused to clarify the facts, but it has gone so far as to instruct Japan on how to handle the situation. This flies in the face of reason.

Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, in a recent meeting with Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in New York, said that the fatal stabbing of a boy attending a Japanese school in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, by a Chinese man was an “accidental, individual case.”

He seems to want to say that Japanese nationals were not targeted. However, his remark — appears to suggest that, for this reason, the matter should not be emphasized — is totally unacceptable.

In addition, Wang said that the Japanese side should “handle the incident calmly and rationally, and avoid politicizing and amplifying it.” It is extremely unreasonable for the representative of the country where the harm occurred to demand a calm response from the representative of the country that suffered the harm.

Japanese media organizations have reported that many Chinese people visited the Japanese school in Shenzhen to offer flowers and mourned the death of the boy. But in China, there is a spate of ongoing groundless anti-Japanese postings on social media and other media, even after the incident. It is quite natural that Kamikawa urged China to address the situation.

In June in China, people including a Japanese mother and her child were attacked with a knife by a Chinese assailant as well. If nothing is done, concern that a similar incident will occur again cannot be dispelled.

China’s stance of shirking its accountability and trying to foist responsibility onto Japan can also be seen in the issue of the discharge of treated water into the ocean from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The Japanese and Chinese governments have agreed that China will gradually resume imports of Japanese marine products. Kamikawa called for an early resumption, but Wang did not mention a timetable, instead demanding that “Japan keep its commitment as long as it allowed China and other countries to take samples.”

The Chinese government continues to refer to the treated water as “nuclear contaminated water.” Japan’s impression of China has also been severely damaged partially by a spate of incidents in which Japanese nationals have been detained in China.

It is necessary for China to be aware that disclosure of information is the first step toward dispelling distrust.

It cannot be overlooked that despite this, the Chinese military is intensifying its activities in the vicinity of Japan and elsewhere and strengthening moves that are the opposite of confidence-building.

In August off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture, a Chinese military aircraft violated Japan’s airspace for the first time. In addition to refusing to explain this incident, China fired an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying a dummy warhead into the high seas of the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 25.

China should realize that, through its coercive behavior, it is severely tarnishing its reputation on its own not only in Japan but also in the international community.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Sept. 26, 2024)