HONG KONG -- Last month, when Japanese and Chinese teams faced each other in the Asian Games soccer final in Beijing, Chinese fans booed so loudly that they drowned out the strains of the Japanese national anthem. And when Japan won, the spectators pelted the Japanese players' bus with soda bottles and broke the window of a car carrying a Japanese diplomat.
Soccer hooliganism is not unknown elsewhere, but the hate focused on the Japanese was so vehement that it was clear the soccer match simply provided an occasion for the venting of deeply held anti-Japanese sentiments in China.
Sino-Japanese discord ranges from a territorial dispute over a few uninhabited islands to competition for an oil pipeline from Siberia to Tokyo's military alliance with Washington. However, the most serious problem stems not from these disputes but from history.