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Whither Shinzo Abe?

By Zhao Jinglun: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, December 4, 2013

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[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

Shinzo Abe's public support has fallen below 50 percent for the first time since he became Japan's prime minister a second time last December, as a direct result of his forcing a national secrecy bill through.

Among the protesters is Takichi Nishiyama, who made his name as a journalist in the 1970s by revealing that Japan secretly promised millions to the U.S. to secure the return of the Okinawa Islands, held by the Americans since WWII. He obtained his scoop from a Japanese foreign ministry official, for which he was charged and convicted under Japan's National Civil Service Law.

At 82 today, he is campaigning against Abe's new, more stringent official secret act.

Abe rode on the popularity of his economic policy known as Abenomics for a while when by the end of last February, the Topex stock market index rose by 22 percent. But the boost contributed by a cheaper yen was artificial. By June 2013, the Japanese Stocks fell back into a bear market, just as Abe fired his "third arrow" aimed at bringing structural reforms to the economy, but it disappointed investors.

Shinzo Abe's most fateful miscalculation has been to take on China as Japan's arch enemy. He figured that he could take advantage of Washington's rebalance to the Asian Pacific region aimed at containing China, to revive Japanese militarism with the backing of the United States.

Japanese imperialism owes China an enormous blood debt. During eight years of its war of aggression against China, it killed some 32 million Chinese, notably in the rape of Nanjing and its kill all, burn all and loot all campaign. It laid half of China to waste.

But even though the Chinese army was relatively poorly equipped then, it tied down some 70 percent of Japan's ground forces, and inflicted tremendous defeats on the aggressor. In September 1937, just two months after Japan launched its all-out invasion, the Chinese military won its first major campaign at Pingxing Pass, wiping out more than 1,000 Japanese crack troops. In March and April 1938, in the Taierzhuang campaign,

Chinese troops neutralized 12,000 invaders. Between 1938 and 1944, four major campaigns were fought in defense of Changsha, in which 107,000 Japanese troops were put out of action. Chinese expeditionary forces fighting in the China-Burma-India Theater repeatedly inflicted heavy losses on Japanese troops.

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