Japan Urged to Hear to Just Demand of Neighboring Countries

China hopes that the Japanese will give serious consideration to the solemn stand and justifiable demand of China and other Asian countries and commit itself to telling the truth about its history.

When asked to comment on the recent demand from the Republic of Korea (ROK) that Japan should revise history textbook that distort facts, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said the textbook material fabricated by Japanese rightist scholars whitewashes and denies Japan's history of aggression.

"The textbook still contains numerous history-distorting facts despite significant revisions," Sun said.

He said the Chinese side has pointed out explicitly the falsehoods in the textbook through diplomatic channels, demanding that the Japanese correct the mistakes and erase the negative impact caused by the situation.

"We noticed that the Japanese government once stated that the viewpoint on history expressed in this textbook does not represent the stand of the Japanese government," he said.

On May 8, the ROK government demanded that Japan revise 35 distorted passages in its middle school history textbook and submitted a detailed proposal for the revisions.

(Xinhua 05/10/2001)