China has condemned Japan's official adoption yesterday of new history textbooks which Chinese scholars say distort the Japanese invasion of China and atrocities committed by Japanese troops.
Qiao Zonghuai, a senior Foreign Ministry official, summoned the Japanese ambassador to China, Koreshige Anami, in Beijing yesterday afternoon.
Qiao lodged a solemn representation over approval of the textbooks "denying historical facts and beautifying invasion."
"The textbooks will be vehemently condemned by people from all Asian countries victimized by Japan, including the Chinese," said Qiao, who demanded the Japanese government honor its commitments regarding history and called for urgent measures to offset the bad impacts of the adoption of the books.
The Foreign Ministry said China's ambassador to Japan, Wang Yi, delivered a representation over the textbooks to the Japanese government in Tokyo yesterday afternoon.
Chinese people from all walks of life yesterday challenged the Japanese way of treating history from various perspectives.
"The just-approved textbooks will disrupt the international order and seriously undermine the confidence of Japan's Asian neighbors in regional peace and security," said Wang Xuan, a Chinese activist leading a legal group to help World War II victims suing Japan for damage inflicted by germ warfare.
"It is even more ridiculous that the textbooks hold China accountable for the war," Wang said. "How could it be possible for a country to invite an invader or start a war on its own land?"
Chinese historians in Beijing said that though about 120 revisions had been made before the textbooks got official approval, "their nature of denying historical facts and beautifying invasion remains unchanged."
They cited as a deliberate distortion of history the total oblivion or ambiguous narration of the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937, when Japanese troops slaughtered more than 300,000 civilians and unarmed  soldiers after taking the then Chinese capital.
Only five of the eight new textbooks mention the "Nanjing incident," and only one mentions "there are allegedly more than 200,000 victims," adding "there are various allegations about the number of Chinese victims."
"The existence of the tragic massacre is an indisputable fact and has been repeatedly proved by ever-increasing historical evidence," said Zhu Chengshan, director of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial in Jiangsu Province.
By denying the existence of the Nanjing Massacre, the new textbooks have "tampered with historical facts to whitewash Japan's wartime atrocities," Zhu said.
Adoption of the new textbooks could also fuel a spontaneous campaign by the Chinese public to block Japan gaining a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council.
Fearing Japan's successful bid for the permanent seat would lead to the revival of its aggressive, militarist past, more than 10 million Chinese have signed an online petition to oppose Japan's move since UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke in favor of Japan's entry on March 21.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a routine press conference yesterday afternoon that "the textbook issue largely decides whether Japan can appropriately treat its militaristic history and instill its young citizens with a right perception of history."
Qin called on the Chinese public to express their sentiments "in a reasonable way," and pledged China would protect the life and property of Japanese citizens and ensure the normal operation of Japanese ventures in China.