Genesis
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Sino Japanese tensions has been described as Japan's unwillingness to apologize and China unwilling to forgive, Japan's revisionist stance, and China's upholding of victory nation, Japan's left wing extremist and Chinese military adventurism.
But it is actually a symptom of something else.
The German and Japanese defeat left both nation in ruins, both would go on to apologize and become the symbol of peace and cooperation, but then something weird happened. China plunged into the cultural revolution after the purge of Deng and Liu who had made progress, capitalist progress after the disaster of the great leap forward.
By the end of the revolution, China was in utter ruins. More destroyed than the Civil war and the Sino Japanese war.
By this time Japan was entering its peak years, by 1980s it was apparent Japan was once again a great power in everything but name and China was still the basket case it had always been since the first Opium war. Slowly but surely the prejudice and racist views were returning.
On the other side US's total victory after WW2 made it into the world's super power and by 1991 the only super power. It was unimaginable US would be challenged again by Germany, Europe or even the World. Germans will apologize and remain peaceful for they see that challenging US would be 100 times more foolish than the war in Russia. That being an US ally was in itself a prestigious position and being defeated by it pose no humiliation.
On some level Japan felt being defeated by China was humiliating or even Japan had in fact not lost to China at all, and if not for the US China would be Japanese territory, and now that the US is a Japanese ally, China would pose no threat.
But as fate would have it history changed once again, China started to modernize in a speed unparalleled and probably won't be matched in human history. By 2010 China surpassed Japan who has been stagnating for decades, and became the second in GDP. By this point the views of China from WW2 has more or less returned in full force and even with this Japan doesn't see China as anything more than what it had always been in decades past.
By 2012, it is apparent China would soon become the undisputed power in Asia with the distance not only impossible to close, but getting wider by the second, both economically, politically, and militarily.
Japan then made a move to change the course of the relationship, she bought the islands.
This became the final straw, as Japan has completely refused to recognize China as a victory nation and the dominate power in Asia. With this one move, the powder keg has been lit and the explosion has brought back old Japanese condescension and Chinese resentment in full gear and so begins the third Sino Japanese confrontation.
Had China been like the US continued to advance post WW2, this tension would never have even been thought of, it would be ridicules to suggest it. But as fate would have it, it didn't work out that way, it was China's inability to act like a victory nation that created the Japanese feelings, but...
Today, the Japanese are going to pay for it....