Student sent back to China over Japanese rising sun flag incident in Russia

A Chinese student who draped himself in the Japanese rising sun flag in a Russian university classroom has been expelled and asked to leave the country, according to state-run newspaper Global Times.
The flag was used by the Japanese military during its imperial expansion and is still used by Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force. It remains a symbol of Japanese militarism and aggression in China and other parts of Asia.
Moscow State University made the decision after the student was criticised by Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily as well as the People’s Liberation Army, which said his actions had glorified Japanese militarism.
The South China Morning Post has contacted the university for comment.
A People’s Daily commentary on Monday said such acts of “promoting militarism betrayed national conscience and violated the shared human value of cherishing peace, and deserved serious criticism and disciplinary action”.
It also warned against provocations by a small number of people it labelled jingri, or “Japanese in spirit” – a derogatory Chinese term for people perceived as identifying with Japan.
On Sunday, Jun Zhengping, a social media account run by the PLA, said in a post: “Regardless of which country or campus one is in, advocating for militarism is an explicit offence against human conscience and is held in contempt by all.”

Global Times reported on Monday, citing sources, that the history faculty at Moscow State University held a meeting on Monday and said it would soon announce its decision to expel the student, reportedly surnamed Chen.
The faculty initiated procedures on Friday for Chen to leave Russia and he had since left the country, according to the report.
That came after several Chinese students in the department signed a petition calling on the university to take action against Chen.
One Chinese student who attended the meeting told the newspaper that the department agreed that the historical consensus on opposing fascism must not be desecrated.
The report quoted acting dean Lev S. Belousov as saying during the meeting that Russia and China had fought alongside each other in World War II, and the friendship between the two countries had a long history.
He said the university’s position on the shared anti-fascist historical consensus was fully aligned with that of China and Chinese students in the department, according to the report.
The incident took place during a history class at the university on Wednesday last week, according to an earlier Global Times report, which cited sources.
The sources said Chen had brought a Japanese military cap from the 1930s to the classroom and draped the rising sun flag over himself.
According to the report, the student was allegedly from Nanjing, the city where Japanese troops committed one of the most notorious atrocities of the war in China when it was still known as Nanking.

Japan’s wartime history has been a persistent source of friction in China-Japan ties, which have been strained for nearly a year over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks last November that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially prompting a military response from Tokyo.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise the self-ruled island as an independent state. However, Washington is opposed to any attempt to take Taiwan by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.