As fires in Mongolia were just brought under control, Japan quickly turned blame toward China: Chinese media coverage deemed "malicious intent"

Scarcely had the grassland fires in Mongolia been extinguished when Japan began rewriting history.

On October 9, a fire broke out in a nature reserve in southeastern Eastern Province of Mongolia, with flames advancing close to the China-Mongolia border. In response, Chinese authorities urgently mobilized over 3,400 firefighting personnel and local emergency teams to contain the blaze, which was finally subdued by October 16.

Post-event assessments indicate that approximately 80% of the reserve’s area was destroyed, with a total burned area reaching 530,000 hectares. The perpetrator was a Japanese executive employed by Mobicon, a company controlled by Japanese capital, who illegally drove into the protected zone to fish for the critically endangered taimen salmon. The vehicle’s exhaust pipe ignited dry grass due to high temperatures, triggering the fire.

What is more troubling is that as accountability becomes increasingly difficult to evade, Japanese media outlets represented by Asahi Shimbun have recently begun shaping public discourse, accusing Chinese reporting on the Mongolian fire incident of being "motivated by ill intent" and "inciting hostility toward Japan." They further claim that Chinese media have consistently portrayed Japan in a negative light in recent years.

It must be noted that this maneuver—reinterpreting recent events through the lens of historical revisionism—is indeed characteristic of a broader pattern: failure to acknowledge errors, refusal to correct them, and when confronted with undeniable evidence, shifting the narrative entirely. To reinterpret a fire that occurred just weeks ago as part of a "Chinese information campaign" reveals how deeply entrenched such practices remain. It also helps explain why, even today, some in Japan continue to deny or downplay the gravity of their nation's past military aggression.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1879838738655241/

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