Why I hate this film with a passion

Rating: Null/10 (20 October 2002)

I watched this film when I was a teenager, and for years I wanted to write a review on this. Now that I have read some of the comments here, I have recently made an exception to rent and watch this again, hoping that I would somehow find it less, er, upsetting as I am older now and less affected by my own self-imposed political correctness. The answer is, still NO. And I will continue to make a point NOT to see any Steven Spielberg's movies JUST because of this film.
Here's my problem. As a Chinese, I feel this strong empathy with the Jewish community as we, as a race, were both victimized during WWII. Them by the Nazi, we by the Japanese. I can also only watch with envy as a lot of Jewish film makers (especially those in the US, including Mr. Spielberg himself) continue to make movies/documentaries to remember the victims and the courage of many people that were trying to make a difference and save a lot of people from the sheer brutality of the aggressors.
And what the most important Jewish film maker (or just film maker) of this generation did with a story that happened in China during WWII. The film is obviously not about our suffering, and that's fine because it's based on a story of a British boy who got caught. However, in the first 15 mins of the film, when Chinese characters briefly appeared, they were either very cruel (like the housemaids trying to steal things from the British boy's home, and hit him when the boy trying to stop them) or just simply thugs/thieves.
If that's not enough, the boy, no doubt was in a lot of distress and going through a lot of unstable emotions while in the war prisoner camp, found some sort of emotional alliance with a young Japanese soldier who had been trying but failed to become part of an "elite" team of pilots whose only duty at that point of the war was to carry out suicide missions. As commented by another user here the brutality of the camp was kept to a minimum, I don't know why as there is plenty in the book. But what we see in this movie, correct me if I am wrong, is that those pilots are being glorified (or in some symbolic sort of way, the "courage" of the Japanese army) as told by film maker's version of the boy's prospective.
One could only imagine what reaction it would provoke IF this film, with more or less the same storyline, was about, say, a British boy in Prague being capture and sent to a camp by the Nazi during WWII.
A bit of history. Shanghai was a safe haven for a lot of Jewish people in Germany and Europe who couldn't make it to the US and Canada from the 1930s onward. They could go there without passports and, though had to face the Japanese army like the Chinese, at least be saved from systemic murders in Europe. From all historical accounts, they were being treated kindly by the local Chinese.
And here's the reason why I have not watched a single film directed by Mr. Spielberg even since I saw the Empire of the Sun (mid-1980s).