The Land of the Rising Sun? or The Land of Open Contempt for Chinese Students?

[TheNoNamedOne]

Chinese students shun Japan for practical, historical reasons (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080531TDY01302.htm)

"There is an open contempt for Asian students, especially Chinese, at universities in Japan," Endo said. "I've seen professors condemning Chinese students for not being fluent in Japanese, while being happy to speak English with Westerners who could not speak Japanese, for example."

Concerning what individual universities can do to change the situation, Endo said they needed to become more progressive. "As many Chinese students hope to enter the business world after returning to China, collaboration between industries and universities will be key to attracting good students," Endo said. "But many professors have been reluctant to go down that road, and such people often hinder efforts by colleagues at the same university to attract good students from around the world."

Seems that Japanese educational institutions and their professors are squandering their opportunity of sorts at being a bright light for future good relations with a growing giant that will soon dwarf Japan.

“Wrongs are often forgiven; contempt never” -- Lord Chesterfield

[Brand_X]

Not many people want to help a potential enemy. Not talking conventional war but business war. I can see why they would embrace their consumers (westerners) and not their competitor. In my eyes its them protecting their Japanese economic pride. That or just showing their contempt for the other asian countries and their citizens. Not many Japanese with pride in their country like China or the other Asian countries. My wife and a lot of her friends can only recall the bad things that China has ever done and subsequently they dislike China. Its probably like that for many of the Japanese.

[P_chan]

It must be all those poison gyoza!

[okisteve]

It seems to be a human tendency to put down those who you fear the most, probably to make the threat seem a bit less. Like we pissed our pants over the Russians during the Cold War but kept making those jokes about ".... a Soviet invention".

(OK, and now "...in Russia, ... ...s you")

Don't look now, but lots of people in the US would like to pretend China isn't eating the world also, but the Japanese have a triple reason for worrying. A) the Chinese have some good reasons for a little payback, B) China is their big back yard, and C) there are ten times as many Chinese over that narrow sealane as Japanese..

I don't have the impression that the Chinese are truly confident of their standing as an economic power yet, and probably not of their military power either. It could change, but it's a good idea to keep it positive with China and not to attempt another Cold War program of "containment" and mutual assured destruction.