Chinese demonstrations are about oil, not history books

[Filius Nullius]

"Thousands march in Chinese demonstrations: Protestors upset with WWII history in Japanese textbooks"

The way CNN.com and other members of the mainstream media are handling the story about Chinese-Japanese tensions makes it seem that it is all about righteous Chinese indignation over revisionist Japanese history textbooks. It is not. The textbooks are a pretext for China's true intentions, which are quite sinister.

The report barely mentions the dispute over drilling in the East China Sea. This is the real reason for the bellicose chest pounding in China. They are trying to intimidate the Japanese into allowing themselves to be "whipstocked," as they say in the oil and gas industry. By drilling at an angle into the natural gas deposits that lie under the portion of the East China Sea controlled by Japan in accordance with international law, the Chinese can use what amounts to a "long straw" to suck out Japanese natural gas reserves.

This is why the Chinese have refused Japanese requests to see the records of exploratory drilling by the Chinese in the ocean floor between the two countries. When the Japanese announced they would drill their own exploratory wells, the Chinese government arranged these demonstrations as a non-too-subtle means of threatening their neighbor.

Buried in the last paragraph in the main story is a chilling quote from a marcher that makes it clear that this is all about a different kind of state-sponsored terrorism, one of which the world has not seen the likes since Hitler was permitted to march unopposed into the Sudetenland and take over the coal deposits there:

"'The Chinese people are angry,' said one marcher, Michael Teng, a graduate student at Donghua University. 'We will play along with Japan and smile nicely at them, but they have to know they have a large, angry neighbor.'"

As we approach what some experts believe is the time of “peak oil,” i.e., the crest of the petroleum/natural gas supply curve, could we be seeing some of the warning signs of the disputes that will inevitably arise around the globe as countries vie over dwindling oil and gas supplies?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Right. The Japanese atrocities were all made up.

And, the Japanese suppression of the truth is all a Chinese ploy to get natural gas.

Seems like the Japanese could pull the covers on the Chinese plan to steal their natural gas by simply altering the history books to fact.

The Japanese are, of course, blameless. All those corpses in Nanking were caused by suicide.

[w4rma]

3. Don't be naive.

You appear to be an ethical and good guy, but politics is much more complicated than demagoguing issues.

[Filius Nullius]

4. Please don't have a thrombo, and try to think clearly!

Did I say the Japanese atrocities were all made up? Certainly not! Everyone knows they happened. That's why any attempt at re-writing history isn't likely to get very far. Even if it does achieve some currency in Japan itself, it will certainly fall on deaf ears throughout the rest of the world.

Maybe I'm being callous, but I just can't get very exercised over events that occurred in China some 70 years ago. Most of the people living in Japan today had nothing to do with those attrocities. They happened, they were terrible, but let's move on. We have many other problems to worry about that are far more important right now.

One such worry is the possibility that controversies like this one may spiral out of control. Clearly, the dispute over the natural gas under the East China Sea is a very serious matter. People don't usually don't go to war or demonstrate by the thousands over the contents of history books. On the other hand, nations certainly have been known fight over natural resources.

It certainly would not be out of character for an aggressive, totalitarian, territory-grasping, resource-coveting state like China to look for a way to intimidate a weaker, less militaristic neighboring state like Japan into abandoning its own interests and falling under China's sway (as they have done on so many occasions in the cases of Taiwan and Hong Kong). What better way to accomplish this than to resurrect ancient grievances in order to motivate its people to take to the streets and denounce the other country in loud and threatening demonstrations?

[smirkymonkey]

2. Good information - the textbook thing didn't seem quite

"riot" worthy on its own, just another manifestation of a greater problem in Sino-Japanese relations.

Kick :kick: