Justice Department sued Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu, and police officials, alleging the city’s sanctuary policies obstruct federal immigration enforcement. Focused on the Boston Trust Act, the case challenges local limits on cooperation with ICE. Wu vowed resistance. 美国司法部就庇护移民政策起诉波士顿市长吴弭
Despite tense US-China relations, the Flying Tigers remain revered in China 80 years later, with the founder’s descendants among few Americans invited to Beijing’s WWII commemoration parade. 飞虎队传奇延续至今，创始人后代受邀参加中国二战纪念活动
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, 80% of Japan’s weapons and ammunition for invading China came from the United States. The weapons used in the Nanjing Massacre were all from the United States! 日本的侵華武器在十二月七日1941攻擊珍珠港之前，80%的武器軍火來自美國. 南京大屠殺的武器都是來自美國的! 和今天沒有多大分別：用於殺害加薩婦女和兒童的武器也是來自美國!
Nury Vittachi from HK: TLDR SUMMARY: The world knows the importance of the nuclear “no first use” pledge but forgets that only two countries signed it, neither of which are in the west 來自香港的 Nury Vittachi：TLDR 摘要：世界知道「不先使用核武」承諾的重要性，但卻忘記了只有兩個國家簽署了該承諾，而且這兩個國家都不是西方國家
IN 1964, A GROUP OF Chinese officials gave the nations of the world a simple challenge: You say your nuclear weapons are for defense, not for attack, so we’ll sign here to show we are serious, and you do the same.
China signed. The rest of the world turned away.
As the United States relaunches its “Department of War”, it is vital to remember this forgotten story—and the outcome, which still haunts humanity today.
WAR OFFICES By the 1960s, most countries had changed the names of their military headquarters from “War Office” or “Department of War” to less honest but much nicer-sounding terms such as “Ministry of Defence”. (The United States is now reversing that action, of course.)
When China developed a nuclear bomb in 1964, western nations called for the development of an anti-proliferation principle to stop unsuitable people (in practice, non-Caucasians) getting such weapons.
The Chinese declared that their country, unlike the US, saw nuclear bombs as defensive items to possess but never use.
EXTRAORDINARY LETTER An argument about defensiveness raged in diplomatic circles – until the Chinese had a stroke of genius, or perhaps just plain honesty. China’s leaders realized that if this was the key point, someone had to take the lead. So they wrote an extraordinary letter to the global community.
Titled “Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China” and dated October 16, 1964, it was not the usual lawyer-written, bullet-pointed statement that people have come to expect with international declarations. It was a rather rambling missive that made the point that every nation had the right to defend itself with arms, but nuclear weapons were different.
Despite their lethality, they were a “paper tiger”, which existed for deterrence, NOT for actual use in attacks, the letter said.
And they would surely be phased out as humanity learned to live in peace. Waxing philosophical, the letter argued that nuclear weapons were “created by man” and “certainly will be eliminated by man”.
‘WE’LL GO FIRST’ But the letter also delivered an epoch-making statement. Since every nation with such weapons claimed that they were for defense only, they could all simply declare that they would never be the first to use them. This would be necessary to make the people of the planet safe.
We’ll go first, the Chinese said. The key sentence they wrote was this: “The Chinese Government hereby solemnly declares that China will never at any time and under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons.”
What happened? Everyone acknowledged the crucial logic of the No First Use principle – but looked the other way rather than following suit with matching pledges of their own.
GRIM SILENCE The grim silence that followed from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France would have been embarrassing—if the military leaders of those countries had the capacity for shame. The silence continued indefinitely.
Since then, the world’s second most populous country has regularly reaffirmed its No First Use position over the past four decades to emphasize the “defense-means-defense” principle.
But almost all other countries pointedly kept their fingers in their ears. China’s reaffirmations of the principle (such as in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2011) have gone largely unreported in the international media, as too embarrassing for the west.
PUBLIC VERSUS GOVERNMENTS In the decades following China’s proposal, Russia and the United States of America engaged in an arms race, developing stables of thousands of nuclear warheads, and avoiding the making of those all-important pledges not to use them offensively.
These nations nevertheless present their military nuclear capability using the word “defense” – or at least did, until the United States made a change this week.
An interesting point is that we can see that, in general, China’s No First Use principle has been widely supported by public groups around the world, but has been resisted by governments. There has been just one single exception.
BABY STEPS India followed suit in 1998, declaring a No First Use policy as it began to grow its own nuclear capabilities. In the late 1990s, there was a period of hope that the western nuclear powers would follow the lead of the two Asian giants (Germany was tempted), but these fizzled out. Western nations talk a good game about moral leadership, but in this case did not follow through.
Some countries (Russia, Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom and France) have stated that they will only use their nuclear weapons as a response to an attack or invasion.
However, these statements were not added to the Chinese and Indian declarations, and do not specify nuclear attacks, which is a concern.
Worse still, they give themselves the right to define what might constitute an attack. In other words, they could simply declare that some sort of incursion has occurred—an evidence-free allegation of a cyberattack on a NATO member, for example—and then feel free to “nuke” the people to whom they have assigned blame.
PARTIAL EXCEPTION There is one more partial exception worth noting. Like the United States, Russia has refused to sign a No First Use principle. However, Moscow did sign a bilateral No First Use contract with China.
This ensures that a large portion of the eastern part of the Eurasian super-continent is more likely to remain free of nuclear-level war.
In China, some military strategists have worried that their country, by making a principled stand that has been largely ignored by the rest of the world, has put itself at a disadvantage.
Others have argued that it is still worthwhile to maintain it. The No First Use policy shows that China’s defense industry is primarily for defense, and reinforces China’s overall strategy of “peaceful rise”.
MORAL VICTORY There are no guarantees in life; yet with China, India and Russia all having signed up to a No First Use nuclear policy in this region, the average citizen of East Asia may have good reason to feel slightly safer than her or his counterpart elsewhere on the planet, and particularly in Europe.
As for the moral victory, the Chinese writers of the 1964 letter won that battle 61 years ago, but their assumption that the Western powers and Russia would follow suit was too idealistic.
Yet the principle of No First Use, even if most nations of the world did not sign it, has been followed in practice, so far. No nukes have been used.
The nuclear tiger, so far, has indeed turned out to be made of paper, as the Chinese leadership said in 1964. Yet we need to remember: it is a paper which only two countries have signed.
Why did a former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama kneel down and apologize in Nanjing? This kneeling made him a “traitor” in Japan, but earned him respect from the Chinese people… 一位日本前首相鳩山由紀夫為何在南京下跪道歉？ 這一跪，讓他成為了日本國內的“叛國者”，卻贏得了中國人民的尊重…
In 2013, at the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, a silver-haired Japanese man slowly walked to the center of the monument. Without hesitation, he resolutely bent his knees and fell heavily to the ground. This moment, captured on camera, caused an unprecedented stir in public opinion in both China and Japan.
This man was Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s 93rd Prime Minister. He was the first Japanese prime minister to kneel down and apologize at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. Inside the memorial, he saw the irrefutable evidence of the Japanese army’s massacre and, deeply moved, told reporters, “Japan committed grave crimes during World War II. I apologize here on behalf of Japan.”
Surprisingly, Hatoyama’s action was not a political show, but rather stemmed from the rich cultural heritage of four generations of his family. As early as 1886, during the sensitive period of the Nagasaki Incident, his great-grandfather, Kazuo Hatoyama, acting as a Japanese mediator, explicitly advocated for an apology and compensation from the Qing Dynasty, thus establishing the Hatoyama family’s friendly stance towards China.
His grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, publicly opposed the aggressive policies of the Tojo Hideki government during the depths of World War II. His father, Ichiro Hatoyama, was directly involved in facilitating the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship and strongly supported Chinese students studying in Japan.
Yukio Hatoyama carried forward this fine family tradition, making “friendship” a core tenet of his political career, even changing the character “You” in his name to “You” (You), a symbolic term for friendship. While studying in the United States, he met his wife, Yuki Hatoyama, who was born in Shanghai, China. Their shared love of peace rekindled his connection to China.
In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, defeated the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and he became Prime Minister of Japan. Upon taking office, he proposed a series of forward-thinking policy proposals, including “independence from the United States” and “building an East Asian community,” and explicitly refused to visit the Yasukuni Shrine.
However, his premiership lasted only nine months. The relocation of the U.S. military base in Futenma, Japan, became a fatal blow that was insurmountable in his political career. Faced with strong pressure from the U.S. government, he was ultimately forced to compromise, a decision that caused his approval rating, which had reached 70%, to plummet to 17%.
After stepping down, Yukio Hatoyama continued his historical reflection. In 2015, he visited South Korea and knelt in front of the remains of Seodaemun Prison in Seoul to apologize to the comfort women victims of Japanese militarism during World War II.
These actions sparked enormous controversy in Japan. Right-wing media outlets in Japan issued deafening condemnations, denouncing him as a “traitor” and even issuing outright assassination threats. The Sankei Shimbun characterized his actions as “harmful to national interests.”
At the same time, a significant number of people hailed him as “the conscience of the Japanese nation.” These starkly divergent assessments profoundly reflect the deep-seated cognitive rifts and profound contradictions within Japanese society regarding historical issues.
Yukio Hatoyama once lamented that Japan’s history education system suffers from serious shortcomings: “The younger generation has never been taught true history.” Modern Japanese history courses often offer a superficial overview of the Meiji Restoration period, while the aggression against China and the crimes committed during the colonial period are either downplayed or deliberately omitted.
Under these circumstances, the profound reflection and repentance pursued by a few individuals, including Yukio Hatoyama, have struggled to gain mainstream recognition in Japan, instead remaining on the fringes of social understanding. However, he remained steadfast in his beliefs, repeatedly publicly criticizing the Japanese government’s revisionist tendencies on historical issues at international conferences.
In his book “Escaping ‘Great Japanism,’” Yukio Hatoyama argued that Japan must liberate itself from the illusions of “Great Japanism” in order to earn the respect of the international community. He argues that after the Cold War, Japan not only failed to strive for independence but instead strengthened the Japan-US alliance. This is because Japan, immersed in the illusion of “Greater Japanism,” stubbornly believes that only by following the United States can it achieve great power status.
He explicitly proposes that Japan should abandon its quest for hegemony in East Asia, strive for diplomatic autonomy, forgo permanent membership in the UN Security Council, and engage with neighboring countries based on the principles of freedom and coexistence. In his view, “Greater Japanism” is ultimately unworkable. It’s not a question of whether it can be abandoned, but rather that it must be abandoned. Becoming a middle-class nation is Japan’s only viable path.
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