China-Japan Split Evident On-Line

The WashTimes has a good analysis of the increasing concern many analysts have over the widening gap between East Asia's two power houses, China and Japan. The article included this startling statement:

One useful, if rough, barometer of anti-Japanese sentiment in China ... is the number of anti-Japanese Web sites in that country.

The number of Chinese sites calling for rallies and boycotts, for instance, had more than doubled to nearly 800,000 by late April over the previous summer, he told a recent gathering at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Japan.

Whoa. If you combined all the right- and left-wing Web sites in the US, what would you get? Maybe 100,000 in a computer-rich country?

Analyst Andrew Horvat offers some good advice for getting out of his conundrum:

The only way out, many analysts say, is taking the difficult and long road embarked on by Germany and France back in the 1950s: To cease recriminations, drawing lines in the sand and bickering over petty sovereignty issues, and instead start looking ahead.

"You need the desire for a shared future," Mr. Horvat said.