Japan can't dump waste in its neighbors' yards
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Besides criticism from the international community, Japan's own public is also unhappy with these actions. Under pressure from all sides, the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano was forced to apologize and promised to carefully notify various countries in the future. The international community will wait to see whether Japan can keep its promise.
After Japan was hit by the massive earthquake, various countries reached out their helping hands. It should have been a good opportunity for Japan to mend its fences with neighboring countries. Yet on March 30, the Japanese Ministry of Education gave permission for seven new textbooks to be used in schools, all of which term the various islands Japan disputes with neighboring countries as Japanese territory. This caused some reactions from other countries.
On April 6, the National Institute for Defense Studies of Japan's Ministry of Defense again released a report on Chinese military and played up the "China threat theory."
We should recognize that there are no borders when tackling disasters. When we combated SARS in 2003, Japan provided 1.7 billion yen ($20 million) worth of aid materials.
When the Wenchuan earthquake happened in 2008, Japan donated money and materials worth of 2.5 billion yen ($29.5 million), the greatest amount of any foreign country.
The triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and potential nuclearmeltdown were deemed "the biggest crisis in Japanese history" by Prime Minister Naoto Kan. However, global sympathy for Japan is no justification for its dumping of nuclear waste with hazardous consequences.
As a neighboring country, we hope that the disaster-hit areas in Japan could rebuild as early as possible. We also hope that the Japanese can respond to goodwill with goodwill.
Japan should be considerate of its neighbors and do more to mend its relations with its neighbors.
The author is a Beijing-based scholar. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
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