By Philip Yeung
Today, at 10 a.m. sharp, a siren wailed in every corner of China. People stood in sorrowful silence, heads bowed, in painful remembrance of over 300,000 souls who perished at the hands of barbaric Japanese war criminals.
Across the sea, a different siren is sounding, warning of earthquakes and tsunamis, in a nation that has long been a nightmare to its Asian neighbors.
And yet, its prime minister, a witch of a woman, spouts provocatively about attacking China if military action breaks out across the Taiwan Strait. Ignorant, neurotic and dangerous, she might tip both countries into an apocalyptic war.
Japan has never been invaded and never will be, because its earthquakes and tsunamis make it unattractive and uninvadable. By the same token, its neighbors need to worry about Japan again seeking to leave its cursed chain of islands in search of greener pastures.
Since Japan's surrender in 1945, the two countries have never been this close to war, thanks to this crazy woman. All that is missing is a spark. She has aroused every Chinese citizen's hate against its imperial evil, and appetite to avenge the unpaid-for atrocities.
Takaichi forgets two things. China is a different country, and this is a different century.
By its long-term centralized purposeful planning, China has been utterly transformed into a super-sporting power, a super-trading power, and a super-power with nuclear teeth.
This time, war with China means Japan will see the end of history. It is not Japan's past imperial glory that she will bring back, but a fiery end to her country.
The core creed of China's leaders is "Never again!" --the rallying cry of every Chinese citizen swearing "No more hundred-year humiliation". By this benchmark, China has far exceeded its KPI.
For, instead of being a fearful country, China is now a feared country. Fear in this case is a good thing. It tells the world that the Chinese dragon has awakened and arrived.
The world is a lot safer when China is feared, instead of a unipolar world dictated by one superpower tempted to launch unwarranted aggressions. Instead of painting China as a threat to its strategic security, Europe should welcome China as a counterbalance and guarantor of peace.
In interpersonal relations, fear is negative. But in international relations, it is downright positive. Only when a major malign actor behaves without fear that we must worry.
For the first time in human history, China's trade surplus has exceeded one trillion dollars this year. Let us celebrate a super-strong China as history's only pacificist superpower. Every super- power, from Japan, Britain, Russia, France, Germany to the US, have all been imperialistic, murderous aggressors.
The sole exception is China. Confucian non-aggression is bred in our bones. As Elon Musk famously said, the aggressive gene is absent in the Chinese DNA, neither hankering after territorial expansion nor domination. All it wants is respect.
It is high time western countries, including the UK which has just stupidly slapped sanctions on two Chinese tech companies for security concerns, stop peddling the fiction that China is their existential threat.
Europeans don't understand history, and they don't understand Chinese geopolitical thinking. They misread the signals and wrongfully transfer their Russia-phobia to China.
The Japanese, by contrast, are born invaders and sneak attackers. But this time, if the tensions erupt beyond mere saber-rattling, China may decide to lay the Japanese imperial ghosts to rest, once and for all.
Takaichi may usher Japan to an early biblical death. But the rest of us can sleep soundly for all eternity.
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