HONG KONG There could scarcely be a sharper contrast than between the bonhomie displayed by China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, on his current tour of South Asia and China's behavior towards its North Asian neighbor, Japan. The anti-Japanese demonstrations during the weekend, and some only slightly less nationalistic outbursts in South Korea, are not just forewarnings of future tensions in the region. They have implications for global governance and the United Nations system - in which India, in particular, would like to play a larger role. The demonstrations in China may have got out of hand, but there is no doubt that they were initiated with the connivance of the authorities. While the old issue of Japanese school textbook versions of Japan's occupation of China was one pretext, the main trigger was Japan's push to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is always a worrying sign when students vent their wrath against foreigners rather than campaigning against injustices at home - and when governments drum up nationalist sentiments to divert attention from their own failings. The demands for apologies for Japan's past sins have been highly selective. It is true that Japan has not been as contrite as one would wish and the visits by Japan's prime minister to Yasukuni Shrine, where some war criminals are buried, are poor diplomacy. But plenty of British textbooks, for example, show scant regard for Chinese views of the Opium Wars or the destruction of the Summer Palace. Likewise many American ones gloss over the massacres that accompanied the "civilizing" U.S. occupation of the Philippines. Queen Elizabeth II has not apologized to Indians for the Amritsar massacre and statues commemorating the bloody exploits of British imperialists are two a penny in London. Beijing also likes to forget that for much of Asia beyond China and Korea, Japan's imperialism was welcomed as hastening the end of Western imperialism.
China's stance on Japan's membership of the Security Council makes nonsense of its claims to represent the developing and upcoming world. It is a crude and blatant attempt to protect its privileged position as the only Asian and only developing country that is a permanent member of the council. If there is to be reform of the United Nations and expansion of the Security Council to reflect the world today, Japan's membership, along with that of India, Germany and Brazil, is essential.