Why mixing up the two deadly rivals is such a blunder

THEY have been the bitterest and bloodiest of enemies for centuries. But most of the continuing hostility between China and Japan dates to more recent times.

Between 1937 and 194 , the Japanese committed many war crimes after invading a large swathe of China.

Perhaps the most notorious was the Rape of Nanking, when during a six-week period from mid-December 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army butchered more than 200,000 inhabitants of the city, then China’s capital, and carried out widespread rape and looting.

Tokyo still refuses to accept full responsibility for the massacre, claiming the death toll was hugely exaggerated.

To this day, some older Chinese citizens boycott Japanese goods in protest.

The two nations also remain locked in dispute over the ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in the South China Sea off Taiwan. Since 1972, Japan has controlled what it calls the Senkaku islands, but China – which refers to them as the Diaoyu islands – disputes sovereignty.

The two countries resumed high-level economic dialogue only in April, following an eight-year stand-off.

Tensions remain high. Last week Japan’s defence ministry scrambled fighter jets to intercept a Chinese electronic surveillance aircraft over the Sea of Japan.