China commentator urges tougher line against Japan

BEIJING (Reuters) - China should prepare for enduring conflict with Japan and embrace nationalism as a source of social unity, a senior commentator with the ruling Communist Party daily wrote against a backdrop of steadily worsening bilateral ties. 

The unusually forceful comments in a new magazine came at a time of renewed sparring between Beijing, long critical of Japan's perceived failure to own up to wartime atrocities, and Tokyo -- this time over the suicide of a Japanese diplomat in Shanghai in May 2004.