China has certainly made the right decision to support India and Germany in their bids for permanent membership of the United Nations' Security Council.

India has always been a peace-loving nation. In World War II, the majority of the Indian people supported the anti-fascist cause. India was the base for the Allies forces to mount offensives to liberate China and Southeast Asia from Japanese militarism and imperialism.

Indian soldiers, together with Chinese, Burmese, British and American forces bravely defended the communication networks linking India, Burma and China.

India has also always been respected as a country that championed non-alignment during the Cold War. Today, India's economic growth is the envy of the world and sets an example of how a once poor British colony can overcome the past and surge ahead with self-confidence.

Historically, India - like China - has also been a centre of Asian civilisation, enriching other parts of Asia, including China, with the peace-loving religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. India is therefore representative of South Asia and the non-Confucian part of Southeast Asia.

On the contrary, there are legitimate reasons for China, South and North Korea to oppose Japan's bid for a permanent Security Council seat. One simple and straightforward reason is that, unlike Germany, Japan has never apologised for its war crimes against humanity.

Culturally, Japan represents no one in East Asia, except themselves and possibly American neo-conservatives. In Northeast Asia, the centre of the Taoist-Confucian-Buddhist civilisation is already been represented by China and, to a certain extent, the Korean peninsula.

Muslims in Southeast Asia are certainly not represented by Japan because Japan has chosen to join the American neo-conservatives to attack Iraq.

Given Japan's lack of independent foreign and defence policy and its slavish alliance with the US, supporting Japan's bid is tantamount to strengthening American hegemony and unilateralism, especially in the Muslim world.

Besides, Japan has never been known to have any significant number of Muslims. If there is any country in East Asia that can represent Muslims, it is Indonesia, not Japan.

After the late 1980s, Japan's economy is, to say the least, uninspiring. After its wild but failed attempt to 'buy up' America in the mid-1980s, it has stagnant for the last 20 years without any new breakthrough.