Look at this

This is a piece of that big industrial explosion in Japan China last August.



It's a standard economic analysis piece after a big mishap, but this quote popped out at me:

"First I saw some splashes of fire,” a university student told the press, "and then a big fire ball after a few seconds." A worker added, "It sounded like the start of a war. I thought maybe Japan was bombing our port."

In 2015 the specter of a militarist Japan from 80 years ago still looms large in the imagination of ordinary Chinese.  I thought that interesting.


I don't like Commies, still, and call Putin a good little Soviet, but...  He's no Brezhnev.  Nor, if visiting Hawaii, would I keep a weather eye to the sky for airplanes with meatballs on their wings.  Southerners talk a big game, but I don't think they REALLY think that the visiting New Yorkers are gonna burn the town down again when the Braves host the Mets.


Japan is the threat, tho. 


I guess it would be.  China was allied with the US, then it wasn't.  And China has fought the USA a few times since then, but, even though we were in a bitter struggle, and certainly were capable of bombing Mainland China, we never did.  Maybe that counts for something.  At least in the public imagination.