As Hacking Continues, Concerns Chinese-Americans May Suffer

BEIJING - As tensions build between Washington and Beijing over cyberattacks, with a growing body of evidence that much of the hacking is coming from China and that the United States is a major target, as The New York Times has reported, are Chinese-Americans feeling the pressure Are they concerned that growing suspicions about China’s intentions toward the United States may cause them to suffer greater discrimination

Even as I was interviewing Frank H. Wu, a prominent Chinese-American and legal scholar, on this topic Thursday morning, reports were coming in from South Korea of cyberattacks there that lamed banks and broadcasters. Some reports said the attacks may have originated from a Chinese server. (Mr. Wu, dean of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, has written books on race and human rights and is a member of the Committee of 100, an influential Chinese-American group that aims “to encourage constructive relations between the peoples of the United States and Greater China,” as it says on its Web site. He spoke from San Francisco via Skype. Mr. Wu, who was born in the United States, describes himself as a “loyal American.”)

Of course, the reports of the possible involvement of a China-based server do not necessarily mean that China was behind the attack in South Korea. In fact, as my colleague Choe Sang-hun wrote from Seoul, the greatest suspicion rests on North Korea. But it served to highlight the issue since South Korea is a U.S. ally and North Korea is close to China, while some North Korean hackers are believed to be close to Chinese hackers.

The rhetoric over cyberhacking is growing tougher, with the White House demanding that the Chinese government stop the widespread theft of data from American computer networks and agree to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace,” as my colleagues Mark Landler and David E. Sanger reported.

So how does a prominent Chinese-American view the issue Here are edited excerpts from my interview with Mr. Wu:

DKT: How do you understand what’s going on here with this cyberhacking situation

FW: The threat of cyberattack is very serious and it’s difficult for lay people to understand the technological aspects of course, but it’s easy enough to grasp the basic idea: that people who are up to no good are choosing high-tech tools essentially to break into secure systems of major American corporations and even possibly the U.S. government.

The Chinese aspect of the threat appears now to be reasonably well documented. Not all attacks are coming from China, some may be coming from Russia or Iran or elsewhere, some may be from the U.S., some may be teenagers who have no particular purpose. But there seems to be enough evidence that some significant part of the cybersecurity threat emanates from China and there are very strong hints that it is not just teenagers out to have fun, but that it may well be an organized effort, possibly with relationships to Chinese government entities, so this is of course very worrisome.

Q: Do you feel the cybersecurity issue is having an impact on Chinese-Americans, or could it in the future

A: Thank goodness in the current controversy there has not yet been very much racial imagery or stereotyping. The cyberthreat however is the perfect scenario for scapegoating a Chinese-American. It’s perfect because China looms large as an economic or even military threat in the eyes of many Americans, and cyberattack fits perfectly with the stereotype of Chinese and Asians generally as not only untrustworthy, but also technologically talented. If you had to pick an image of how an Asian nation might attack the United States, technology would be an image that comes to mind easily.

Q: What can Chinese-Americans do to counter the development of a negative perception

A: Actually Chinese-Americans are the perfect community for the U.S. to rely on in responding to these issues. The Committee of 100 was formed in the belief that Chinese-Americans are uniquely situated in a bridge-building role, as people with Chinese ancestry with some understanding of Chinese culture but as loyal American citizens. That combination allows people to be citizen diplomats, to facilitate understanding, to help ensure that dialogue is possible and remains productive and thoughtful.

For Chinese-Americans, there is a long history of doubt about their loyalty, though there have been Chinese-Americans in the U.S. in significant numbers starting as early as the 1830s. … There are fifth-generation Chinese-Americans, Chinese-American blacks and Mexicans. Starting in the 1980s, so maybe a generation after the laws [ending ethnic discrimination in immigration, in 1965] were passed, a mainland Chinese influx began. And that’s altogether a different population. So Chinese migration to the U.S. has come in different waves with different identities and into different Americas. You know America has become multicultural. Today there is no single Chinese-American community. Chinese-Americans form very many separate communities, partly based on Mandarin or Cantonese, partly based on whether they’re professional or working-class, still based on people’s views about Communism.

Q: What’s your message to the hackers

A: Chinese hackers should not be doing what they’re doing. I doubt that the opinions of Chinese-Americans will influence them. They probably are only barely aware of the existence of Chinese-Americans. But on cybersecurity, if I were to generalize, I would say the Chinese-American view of cybersecurity is quite similar to the general American view. Chinese attacks on U.S. institutions through the Internet and other technological means should stop.

But Chinese-Americans have a particular concern, different from other Americans. That concern is that Chinese-Americans, regardless of their loyalty or how many generations their families have been in the U.S., or how assimilated they are, will be blamed wrongly for the actions of foreign individuals with whom we have no relationship.

IHT Quick Read: March 21

NEWS An uprising against the Taliban that began last month in a southern Afghan village has now spread through dozens of others, according to residents and Afghan and American officials, in the most significant popular turning against the Islamist insurgents in recent years. Carlotta Gall reports from Pishin Gan Sayedan, Afghanistan.

Showing solidarity with Israel’s growing concern about chemical weapons in neighboring Syria, President Obama stated bluntly on Wednesday that if an investigation he had ordered found proof that the Syrian military had used such weapons it would be a “game changer” in American involvement in the civil war there. Mark Landler and Rick Gladstone report from Jerusalem.

Scrambling to placate international lenders, Cyprus late Wednesday proposed to nationalize pension funds from state-run companies and conduct an emergency bond sale to help raise the €5.8 billion the indebted country needs to secure a bailout. Liz Alderman and David M. Herszenhorn report from Nicosia, Cyprus.

Computer networks running three major South Korean banks and the country’s two largest broadcasters were paralyzed Wednesday in attacks that some experts suspected originated in North Korea, which has consistently threatened to cripple its far richer neighbor. Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

Once highly dependent on revenue from petroleum sales, the Syrian government has lost control of many of the country’s major oil fields over the past few months as Kurdish forces and the rebel Free Syrian Army have made significant gains in the east. Josh Wood reports from Beirut.

The embattled prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, was fighting for her political life on Thursday after she accepted a public demand for a leadership ballot put forward by a senior lawmaker from her ruling Labor Party, who said that the party’s only hope of prevailing in upcoming elections was to return to office the man Ms. Gillard deposed in a 2010 party coup. Matt Siegel reports from Sydney.

A treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer has, for the first time, produced remissions in adults with an acute leukemia that is usually lethal, researchers are reporting. Denise Grady reports.

The French police on Wednesday searched the Paris apartment of Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in connection with an investigation into her handling of a financial scandal when she was the French finance minister. Nicola Clark reports from Paris.

The main subsidiary of Suntech Power, one of the world’s largest makers of solar panels, collapsed into bankruptcy on Wednesday in a remarkable reversal for what had been part of a huge Chinese government effort to dominate renewable energy industries. Keith Bradsher reports from Hong Kong.

The European Central Bank plans to begin using affirmative action to increase the number of employees who are women, a top bank official said Wednesday, acknowledging that men currently dominate the making of monetary policy. Jack Ewing reports from Frankfurt.

ARTS China is in the midst of a museum-building binge, fueled by the nation’s booming economy, but the Chinese are still sorting out what exactly they want from their museums. Holland Cotter reports.

SPORTS A trip through Vietnam will show you that even if a country doesn’t have thriving pro leagues or much money, it still enjoys playing â€" and watching â€" athletic pursuits. Christopher Clarey reports from Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam.

What Argentine Priests Knew About the ‘Dirty War’

In 1975, I watched Buenos Aires churches fill with distraught mothers praying futilely for news of missing sons and daughters. Troubled police officers frequented the confessionals. Most Argentines suspected that President Isabel Perón and her Rasputin, José López Rega, were behind official death squads that made so many people disappear. Priests knew the details.

A military junta bundled Ms. Peron off to exile in 1976 and unleashed full-bore repression. They called it war, but it wasn’t. Disparate acts by unconnected rival leftist groups brought institutional torture and official terror. Military flights dumped victims at sea. Still alive, they would gasp in water and sink.

For three crucial years, as placid Argentina headed toward hell, I was based in Buenos Aires. I arrived in 1973 when night noises ranged to wailing tango chords and traffic din. Within a year, those were punctuated by spine-curdling shrieks as victims were bundled into those famous Ford Falcons without license plates. By the time I left in 1976, after the coup, we slept in different places each night because of unsettling threats. When profiles of those shadowy death squads emerged, they were as we had thought: off-duty cops commanded by high-ranking police and military officers. Many were devout family men who believed themselves on a mission for God and country. My sense is that the “war” would have been far less dirty had the Roman Catholic church stood up to its perpetrators.

“The church behaved appallingly badly,” Robert Cox recalled on the phone from South Carolina. As editor of the English-language Buenos Aires Herald back then, he hammered away at the military’s excesses which national dailies all but ignored. I never met Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis but then superior of Argentine Jesuits. Mr. Cox knew him well.

Mr. Cox helped the human rights campaigner Emilio Mignone search for two priests kidnapped by death squads. They resurfaced after five months of brutal torture. Although a court case was dropped against Father Bergoglio, both priests accused him of playing a part in their captivity.

In his book “Dictatorship and Church,” Mr. Mignone excoriated the Roman Catholic hierarchy for inaction. But, Mr. Cox recalled, he did not say that the Jesuit superior handed over the two priests. “Mignone believed Bergoglio was like a pastor who lost his sheep and did nothing to find them,” he said.

That is what I saw on a large scale. As Associated Press bureau chief, I was finally able to link the government to death squads because a U.S. Embassy attaché, an F.B.I. official, decided to spill the beans. At the time, only Mr. Cox and his American-owned paper had the courage to demand answers about mysterious disappearances. No one gave them. My informant sketched a complete, gruesome picture. But I could not quote him.

The church could have spoken out publicly while privately giving reporters leads to follow. Some priests worked quietly to help families find missing loved ones. But Argentine prelates were leery of activist priests elsewhere in Latin America. Some shared the junta’s belief that the military was defending a wider world with a noble campaign against Communist threat.

The same might be said for Gerald Ford’s administration, which knew much and did little. But politicians and diplomats answer to a lower order. The church saw widespread government-backed atrocities up close on a daily basis. It leaders apparently concluded that the end would justify the means. But it didn’t.

Once So Mighty, Now Gone: China’s Ministry of Railways

BEIJING â€" With nearly 100,000 kilometers of track, China’s railway system is the second-largest in the world, according to Sheng Guangzu, the last minister of railways. Its nearly 9,400 kilometers of high-speed rail â€" rising fast as China invests heavily in the sector â€" is the largest.

But as I write in my Page Two Letter today, change is coming to “the independent kingdom” that was the Ministry of Railways since the founding of the state in 1949. Especially in the early decades of the People’s Republic, with air travel minimal and no private vehicular traffic, rail was king. Generations of families worked on the railroads, making it a culture as well as a way of life.

Now the massive system, which employs more than 2 million people, is being turned into a state-owned corporation. Speculation among ordinary people and some analysts is rife that certain people, perhaps highly-placed families in the Communist Party, will gain enormously from the shift from ministry to company, while others say it is an important part of economic reform and that as a result of the change, the corruption-plagued system will be better run.

Among ordinary workers, there’s considerable anxiety, and an insistent concern about whether their lives will actually improve.

“As a second generation working on the Qinghai-Tibet railway, I want to know if they’re going to change employee benefits, if there will be new developments in terms of culture, and if railway employees will benefit more,” said Shandian zhangu deli’an on Sina Weibo, the country’s biggest microblog.

“On March 18 the ministry was formally dissolved, where will we ordinary people and workers go This month’s salary was chopped by 776, that’s half a month’s pay!” wrote Liantao tingmeng.

“I’m a railway worker, and I hope the reform will be to the material benefit of the employees,” said Fanren yefu.

More Proof That Rules Alone Won’t Save Threatened Wildlife

HONG KONG - A major international conference on wildlife trade last week added 343 animal and plant species to the list of roughly 34,000 that are considered threatened. Trade in these creatures is either banned or strictly monitored, and the outcome was widely welcomed by conservationists as an important development.

At the same time, however, warnings abounded that the actual implementation of trade restrictions is what will make the difference between the survival and extinction of many species.

And, as if on cue, two developments late on Tuesday provided a stark reminder of how hard it is to enforce the curbs foreseen under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites.

From the central African state of Chad came the news, reported by Reuters, that poachers had killed at least 86 elephants, including 33 pregnant females and 15 calves.

The killing was the worst in the region since more than 300 elephants were slaughtered for their ivory in Cameroon early last year. Conservationists warn that elephant poaching in the region is now “out of control.”

Meanwhile, customs officials in Bangkok, where the Cites meeting took place, made two big seizures of threatened tortoises - among them some of the rarest in the world. Traffic, an organization that monitors wildlife trade, has more details here.

Poaching and illegal trading of wildlife has soared in recent years. And it is hitting not only well-known animals such as elephants, tigers and rhinos, but, increasingly, creatures that were not in great demand until recently.

As I wrote last week, the sheer speed of these changes - taking in new species and geographies - is leaving scientists, conservationists and enforcement agencies scrambling to keep up.

My colleague Thomas Fuller recently wrote about Vixay Keosavang, a Laotian who is notorious for his activities in the wildlife trade, and last September Jeffrey Gettleman wrote about the role that organized syndicates increasingly play in the ivory trade.

No wonder that, despite the elation over the successes of the Cites meeting, some campaigners called on governments to take much more determined action.

The meeting fell short of putting the brakes on poaching of elephants, tigers, and rhinos, commented the Environmental Investigation Agency, Wildlife Protection Society of India and Freeland Foundation, in a joint news release.

“Poaching and trafficking of elephants, tigers and rhinos is at crisis levels,” they said, “yet domestic trade is still allowed and international trade in the body parts of these critically endangered animals is still being negotiated.”

Happy International Happiness Day

LONDON - If you want to avoid the risk of being accosted by total strangers urging you to “be happy,” you should probably stay home on Wednesday.

The United Nations has declared March 20 the first International Day of Happiness to underline the commitment of its 193 member states to “better capture the importance of the pursuit of happiness and well-being in development with a view to guiding their public policies.”

According to the Positive News Web site, based in Britain, a raft of events and activities will take place to mark the day.

“There is the Happy Lunch event in Brussels, for example, or the thought-provoking Economics of Happiness conference in Australia,” it reported.

“Those in Washington D.C. can expect a flood of happiness when the free hugs flash mob takes over, and passers-by at London’s Liverpool Street train station will be inspired by groups of people holding up boards and banners with positive messages written on them.”

You have been warned.

The initiative for Happiness Day came from the Kingdom of Bhutan, the small landlocked Himalayan state, which adopted a Gross National Happiness Index as a better measure of its people’s prosperity than its income.

Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary-General, marked the day by calling for a reinforced commitment to inclusive and sustainable human development.

“When we contribute to the common good, we ourselves are enriched,” he said. “Compassion promotes happiness and will help build the future we want.”

No one would deny the positive benefits of happiness, a state of mind that Americans have been pursuing as an inalienable right since the Declaration of Independence.

The Action for Happiness organization in Britain urges people to count their blessings. “People who are grateful tend to be happier, healthier and more fulfilled,” it says. “Being grateful can help people cope with stress and can even have a beneficial effect on heart rate.”

Academic studies of happiness have proliferated in recent years, with interest spawning a range of international indexes ranking the well-being of nations.

A WIN-Gallup International poll of global hope and happiness revealed in December that gloom was subsiding worldwide amid optimism about economic recovery, although the “gloomy trend” in Western Europe still faced challenges.

The finding appeared to acknowledge a link between happiness and economic prosperity, although the poll also found that “a large number of people refuse to be gloomy despite their poor view on economic prospects for their nation.”

Governments have a natural tendency to trumpet their high rankings in such polls as a way of claiming credit for their citizens’ happiness.

A 2004 paper by researchers at Austria’s University of Graz nevertheless cautioned that, “many studies have shown that happiness varies substantially between nations and that these differences are relatively stable over time.”

There was some skepticism about whether the United Nations, which deals daily with the misery created by war and famine, and which, at the level of the Security Council, appears unable to resolve crises in Syria and elsewhere, really needed a Happiness Day.

Le Monde grumpily noted that around 120 days were already set aside in the U.N. calendar to celebrate themes as diverse as jazz, migratory birds and rural women.

“This is either a way of trivializing happiness,” it wrote, “or of suggesting that one day’s happiness a year is enough!”

Has the U.N. got better things to do than try to cheer us all up And should governments take credit or blame for our changing moods Tell us what you think. Meanwhile, have a good day!

IHT Quick Read: March 20

NEWS Lawmakers rejected a 10 billion euro bailout package for Cyprus on Tuesday, sending the president back to the drawing board to devise a plan that might enable the country to receive a financial lifeline while avoiding a default that could reignite the euro crisis. Liz Alderman reports from Nicosia, Cyprus.

Striking a tone of radical humility, Pope Francis offered a passionate pledge in his installation Mass on Tuesday to serve “the poorest, the weakest, the least important,” urging world leaders to protect human life and the environment and use tenderness to inspire hope. Elisabetta Povoledo and Rachel Donadio report from Vatican City.

Eighteen bombs and an assassination in Baghdad on Tuesday were a reminder of the violence that regularly afflicts Iraq a decade after the American-led invasion. Tim Arango reports from Baghdad.
.
The American ambassador to Laos said on Tuesday that the Laotian authorities had blocked a United States investigation into the disappearance of two citizens and a resident of the United States. Thomas Fuller reports from Bangkok.

An outspoken radio station in Budapest has found itself at the center of what its director calls a government-backed war to weaken and silence it. Dan Bilefsky reports from Budapest.

The Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily halted a landmark law that would provide free contraception to poor women. Supporters and opponents of the legislation will argue their cases before the Supreme Court on June 18. Floyd Whaley reports from Manila.

The British government on Tuesday cleared away the last big regulatory hurdle for building the country’s first new nuclear power plant in nearly 20 years. But whether construction will proceed remains uncertain, because the government has not finalized financial terms with the builder, EDF Energy. Stanley Reed reports from London.

Jacob J. Lew, the American Treasury secretary, met with President Xi Jinping of China on Tuesday in the first high-level encounter between American and Chinese officials since Mr. Xi assumed the presidency, and one that recognized sticking points in a relationship that has drifted in the last few months. Jane Perlez reports from Beijing.

Federal authorities in the U.S. are examining Microsoft’s involvement with companies and individuals that are accused of paying bribes to overseas government officials in exchange for business, according to a person briefed on the inquiry. Nick Wingfield reports from Seattle.

ARTS The Opéra National de Lorraine in Nancy, France, has mounted the first staging of Oscar Wilde’s work “The Importance of Being Earnest”. George Loomis reviews from London.

Three plays currently in London: William Boyd’s “Longing” is a Chekhov mash-up and two other shows (“The Living Room” and “Ring”) provide grim world views. Matt Wolf reviews from London.

SPORTS Samuel Deduno and four relievers held Puerto Rico to three hits in the final as the Dominican Republic won all eight of its games in the World Baseball Classic. Tyler Kepner reports from San Fransisco.

Pope Francis is a well-established fan of soccer, a sport that has a long history with religious institutions. Rob Hughes writes from London.

China and Japan Spar Over War Trials, More Than 6 Decades On

BEIJING - What would international reaction be if Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, were to publicly cast doubt on the fairness of the Nuremberg Trials, which condemned top Nazis at the end of World War II

Something quite similar may have happened recently in Japan, where, according to media reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast doubt on the Tokyo Trials there (these found about two dozen prominent Japanese guilty of war crimes; seven were sentenced to death).

Here’s a headline from the Japan Daily Press: “PM Abe says WWII war crime trials were just ‘victors’ justice.’ ”

“In a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee last Tuesday, Abe said that what the world now thinks of the outcome of World War II was dictated by the victorious Allied Forces and it is only under their judgement that the Japanese were condemned,” the Japan Daily Press article ran, citing an article in The Telegraph.

World War II is a still a sensitive topic not just in China but further afield in Asia, where memories of brutality by the invading Japanese Imperial Army linger and many believe that Japan, unlike Germany, has never entirely faced up to what it did. Memories may be bitterest in China, where millions died and where the government uses anti-Japanese sentiment to bolster nationalism.

This week there was a response in China to Abe’s comments, and it took an unusually scholarly form: The National Library of China announced it would for the first time publish what it said was its original historical documents and records of the trials, in which Chinese judges and prosecutors took part, to be called “Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East” (as the court was formally known). The collection will be published starting in June and will be in two parts; 80 volumes of trial records, to be followed by 50 additional volumes of archival materials and references, reported the China Culture News, a newspaper owned by the Ministry of Culture.

The report promised that the documents, which will be available to researchers and ordinary readers, would push back against “rightists” in Japan who deny the justice of the trials or other aspects of World War II history, long a complaint of China’s.

“On Mar. 3, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a parliamentary budget meeting, openly called into question the Tokyo Trials,” the China Culture News wrote, citing Gao Hong, a researcher at the library and head of document preservation from the Republican era (that is, from 1911-1949). The new collection “will become a powerful tool for refuting the opinions of Japanese rightists and conservatives who distort or deny the historical truth about the invasion of China.”

Last year the library, together with Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, set up an institute to study the trials, called the Tokyo Trials Research Center, it said.

Yet if China accuses rightists in Japan of distorting the debate over the war, historians have said that China has done so too.

After the war, the Chinese Communist Party glossed over wartime atrocities, to “avoid engendering national hatred towards Japan that would have confused it with China’s true archenemies, the KMT,” or Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalists, “and the United States,” wrote He Yinan in an essay in a book, “Japan’s Relations with China: Facing a Rising Power.” “One thing it did was to suppress domestic truth-telling about Japanese war crimes and Chinese suffering,” Ms. He wrote.

The article in the China Culture News may have acknowledged that problem, if obliquely. “For a long time, because of various historical reasons, there has been a great deal of urgent work that has needed to be done to extend the accumulation, thorough research and international scholarly exchanges on the first-hand materials of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East , it said.

China and Japan Spar Over War Trials, More Than 6 Decades On

BEIJING - What would international reaction be if Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, were to publicly cast doubt on the fairness of the Nuremberg Trials, which condemned top Nazis at the end of World War II

Something quite similar may have happened recently in Japan, where, according to media reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast doubt on the Tokyo Trials there (these found about two dozen prominent Japanese guilty of war crimes; seven were sentenced to death).

Here’s a headline from the Japan Daily Press: “PM Abe says WWII war crime trials were just ‘victors’ justice.’ ”

“In a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee last Tuesday, Abe said that what the world now thinks of the outcome of World War II was dictated by the victorious Allied Forces and it is only under their judgement that the Japanese were condemned,” the Japan Daily Press article ran, citing an article in The Telegraph.

World War II is a still a sensitive topic not just in China but further afield in Asia, where memories of brutality by the invading Japanese Imperial Army linger and many believe that Japan, unlike Germany, has never entirely faced up to what it did. Memories may be bitterest in China, where millions died and where the government uses anti-Japanese sentiment to bolster nationalism.

This week there was a response in China to Abe’s comments, and it took an unusually scholarly form: The National Library of China announced it would for the first time publish what it said was its original historical documents and records of the trials, in which Chinese judges and prosecutors took part, to be called “Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East” (as the court was formally known). The collection will be published starting in June and will be in two parts; 80 volumes of trial records, to be followed by 50 additional volumes of archival materials and references, reported the China Culture News, a newspaper owned by the Ministry of Culture.

The report promised that the documents, which will be available to researchers and ordinary readers, would push back against “rightists” in Japan who deny the justice of the trials or other aspects of World War II history, long a complaint of China’s.

“On Mar. 3, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a parliamentary budget meeting, openly called into question the Tokyo Trials,” the China Culture News wrote, citing Gao Hong, a researcher at the library and head of document preservation from the Republican era (that is, from 1911-1949). The new collection “will become a powerful tool for refuting the opinions of Japanese rightists and conservatives who distort or deny the historical truth about the invasion of China.”

Last year the library, together with Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, set up an institute to study the trials, called the Tokyo Trials Research Center, it said.

Yet if China accuses rightists in Japan of distorting the debate over the war, historians have said that China has done so too.

After the war, the Chinese Communist Party glossed over wartime atrocities, to “avoid engendering national hatred towards Japan that would have confused it with China’s true archenemies, the KMT,” or Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalists, “and the United States,” wrote He Yinan in an essay in a book, “Japan’s Relations with China: Facing a Rising Power.” “One thing it did was to suppress domestic truth-telling about Japanese war crimes and Chinese suffering,” Ms. He wrote.

The article in the China Culture News may have acknowledged that problem, if obliquely. “For a long time, because of various historical reasons, there has been a great deal of urgent work that has needed to be done to extend the accumulation, thorough research and international scholarly exchanges on the first-hand materials of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East , it said.