Pay attention to Beijing’s wording.
This is no longer the old language of Japan “moving backward on historical issues.”
China is now accusing Japanese politicians of harboring deep-rooted historical distortions, attempting to exonerate war criminals, overturn the verdict on aggression, and pave the way for remilitarization.
And the phrase “倒行逆施” is especially important.
It does not simply mean “going backward.”
It means deliberately reversing an established historical judgment and acting against the political order built from it.
In other words, Beijing is no longer treating Yasukuni as a symbolic dispute over memory.
It is treating historical revisionism as a broader attempt to challenge the post-war settlement itself.
The sequence is clear:
whitewash aggression → rehabilitate war criminals → dismantle historical restraints → normalize remilitarization.
That is why the reference to the 80th anniversary of the Tokyo Trials matters.
China is reconnecting the present argument to the legal and political foundations of the post-war order.
This is no longer about “hurt feelings.”
It is about whether Japan is trying to reverse the verdict of 1945.