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Rockall scraps plan for Sino-Japanese cultural centre

The Rockall International Relations Foundation has scrapped a scheme to build a Sino-Japanese cultural and resource centre, we can reveal. The planned resource — a £200m glass, steel and bamboo construct designed to showcase all that is good about China and Japan — will not now go ahead after ugly scenes at the ground-breaking ceremony.

The trouble began at around 10am last Friday when a Shanghai-based protestor kicked the Honda Civic which had carried Japanese foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura to the sacred isle. He at once demanded an apology from his counterpart Li Zhaoxing and further questioned the validity of the latter's insurance documents. Li immediately weighed in with ugly allegations regarding Japan's behaviour in Nanjing in 1937 and 1938, which Machimura dismissed as an "incident" while trying to force the driver's door on his wounded Civic.

At this point — and in an attempt to calm the situation — Machimura offered his "regrets for all those who died in the Rape of Nanjing", and promised to amend Japanese history books to reflect the true scale of the slaughter — reckoned by Japanese historians to be around 11 people and a couple of passing dogs. He was immediately attacked by approximately 1000 infuriated Chinese armed with burning Japanese flags and banners reading "Be vicious towards Japanese devils!"

There then followed a brief lull in the fistfight after one demonstrator announced the imminent intervention of roving rock pundit Bono, "fighting mad as only a besunglassed foreign devil can be", as one visibly-shaken participant later explained. In the event, the report proved false, with Saint Bono later confirmed as having flown into the Vatican that very morning in anticipation of his election as Pope Bono I.

Duly convinced that they were not about to receive a very strong lecture indeed on "how to get along" from the U2 frontman, the Shanghai hoi-polloi then turned its attention to Rockall's only Japanese restaurant — the Rising Sun Sushi Emporium — making short work of the "slitty-eyed foreign devils" therein.

Nobutaka Machimura later told The Rockall TImes: "Japan has no reason whatsoever to apologise to China. Look, this infant school history book clearly outlines the last five hundred years of peaceful co-operation and harmony between our two nations."

Li Zhaoxing weighed in: "Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are Japanese, but if they don't stop belly-aching about Taiwan then these running dog lackey foreign devils will get a taste of sharpened Chinese bamboo, make no bloody mistake." Pressed as to whether there was a racial aspect to the tensions, Li chuckled: "Listen you big-nosed white devil, the Chinese are no more racist any other country. I mean, in the UK, you don't like those black devils either, do you?"

A spokesman for the Rockall International Relations Foundation, speaking inside the comparative safety of The Fighting Dog and Pikey on Rockall's celebrated marina while a small group of enraged Chinamen outside torched a poster of Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, sighed: "We had such high hopes for the new centre. Luckily, I can confirm that we have agreed to transfer the funds into an exciting new initiative — A Ruso-Chechen Friendship gymnasium. What do you think?

Previously

• China is shining beacon of democracy, says man clutching enormous export contract
• Japan provokes tsunami fury
• Jap discovered still fighting World Cup

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