Wen Jiabao : most Japanese also war victims

China's premier Wen Jiaobao is absolutely right in observing that just a few militarist leaders were to blame for Japan's past imperial aggression and that most Japanese people were also war victims. The observation is also in line with what Chairman Mao and other New China's builders told the people of China during and after the war of resistance.

Reflecting on the relations between China and Japan, the first premier and foreign minister of New China Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) once remarked that Sino-Japanese relationship had been defined by 3,000 years of civilisational exchanges and only 50 years of conflicts. The 50 years of conflicts evidently refer to the period between the 1894-1895 First Sino-Japanese War which ended with Imperial Japan occupying and colonising Taiwan and the 1945 defeat of Imperial Japan by the Allies, which included China and the United States as well as other partisan forces and heroic individuals in the region.

Premier Wen Jiaobao is currently in Japan for an official visit. Before arriving at Japan, he also visited the Republic of Korea (ROK).

In memory of Norman Bethune