Chinese resentment of Japan has been one of the invariants of the modern world, going all the way back to the May Fourth movement of 1919, when mass protests erupted in China over the transfer of German concessions in that country to Japan after World War I

Chinese resentment of Japan has been one of the invariants of the modern world, going all the way back to the May Fourth movement of 1919, when mass protests erupted in China over the transfer of German concessions in that country to Japan after World War I. The egregiously bad behavior of the Japanese in their various aggressions against China from 1931 to 1945 further stoked the fires.

Still, that was all a lifetime ago, and the ferocity of the anti-Japanese demonstrations all over China these past few days needs some explaining. The major cause, the Chinese tell us, is a decision by Japan's education ministry to approve a school textbook that downplays the 1931-45 horrors. We have a modest proposal to offer. Let Japanese schoolchildren be taught of the cruelties their ancestors inflicted on the Chinese; and let Chinese schoolchildren be taught about the numerous campaigns of mass murder, forced labor, and cultural destruction carried out by the Chinese Communist party against Tibetans, Turkestanis, Mongolians, landowners, intellectuals, religious believers, "counter-revolutionary elements," and so on. A close examination of China's high-school textbooks would, we feel sure, demonstrate that in the matter of suppressing unpleasant facts about history, China's ruling Communist party has nothing to learn from anyone.

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