Drills Spur Nationalist Fervor 2012‐09‐13
Beijing stages live‐fire military games amid tensions with Japan. AFP Chinese navy personnel on the deck of a warship, April 4, 2011.
China carried out live‐fire military exercises Thursday in the wake of the purchase of a disputed island chain in the East China Sea by the Japanese government amid a flurry of nationalist rhetoric in the tightly controlled official media, although experts said a military confrontation remained unlikely. According to the Shanghai Morning Post newspaper, the drills include a naval exercise in the Yellow Sea, as well as army and air force maneuvers in southwestern China, while the Beijing Times said that the drills include exercises which would prepare the country's People's Liberation Army (PLA) to retake the islands by force. Chinese papers also boosted the anti‐Japanese rhetoric in a series of editorials, with the Global Times, which has links to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, warning Tokyo that China could act to "wash away" the shame of its wartime humiliation at Japanese hands. "The Chinese have restrained their antipathy toward Japan for a few generations," the article said. "The brief friendly period of the 1970s and 80s helped heal the wounds between the two countries. But it is far from a fundamental change." "We are gradually realizing among seemingly endless provocations from neighboring countries that a firm response to the provocateur is also a must for securing a peaceful environment," the paper wrote. The English‐language China Daily newspaper quoted a senior Chinese foreign ministry official as saying that China would never acknowledge Japan's "illegal grab and so‐called actual control" of the Diaoyu Islands, which are administered as the Senkaku by Japan's coastguard but claimed by China and Taiwan. Internal tensions
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