China's President Visits Japan

I. Citation- Title of the article: China's President Visits Japan
Source: The New York Times, Date: May 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/world/asia/08china.html?ref=world

II. Summary- The article I decided to choose for the blog was China's President Visits Japan. The major points of this article was that China and Japan pledged to make their nations partners instead of rivals. The hopes of the two is to end the tense relations between the two Asian powers. The friendly symbolism of the trip is meant to help ease Japan's insecurities about China's current rise in economy and military. With the ease of Japan's fears of China's current excellence, comes the hope that the two large economies will catch up to pace with the trading networks. They have decided to put past wars, and conflicts behind and work on uniting as two of the world's largest economies. "As neighbors, and as countries with an enormous influence on Asia and the world, China and Japan have no alternative but to walk the road of peace, friendship and cooperation." In the end the whole hope for this meeting between China and Japan is that they will learn to cooperate and work together, which will strengthen the economic world.

III. Reactions-
A) This article relates to the AP world theme of the impact of interaction among and within major societies because this has to do with the two major Asia societies and how in the past their interaction was the influence of economy. Also how now with their uniting, will come an increase and peace in the economic world.

B) The historical background of Japan and China, has always involved wars and fights, never peace. China has a past of criticizing Japan, and on the last trip the Chinese President made to Japan there was an argument over the World War Two-era aggression. Therefore China and Japan have never exactly been on good terms.

C) The point of view of this article is most likely a white, man, religion unknown, who recovered his information from news reports and interviews.

D) In my opinion there is no evidence of bias in this article because the author was writing from facts that he received from sources such as interviews, and up to date news reports. Also in my opinion it didn't seem like he was either Chinese or Japanese, therefore showing no area for being bias.

E) To gain full knowledge of the issue, or the resolution of a current issue I feel that a statement from the citizens in China and Japan are needed. I feel their opinion would help gain all the knowledge because they're the ones that will be effected but what their leaders are deciding to do, and since they have always known to hate the other, I wonder how they will react to all of this.

F) My own reactions to this article is that I agree that China and Japan should learn to cooperate with each other because they are two major Asia societies, and play an important role in the economic world. With these two major societies joining, I feel that the trading world will change dramatically, and there will be a boost in economy.