
China has said on the 76th anniversary of the Chinese People’s War that this victory was against fascist forces. Both China and Russia had to face the aggression of Japan.
In response to a question in the daily press conference on Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that this victory is important for both China and Russia. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that once again some people are trying to forget history, but China will not allow this to happen.
- The story of China and Japan’s enmity
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Whenever there is talk of hostile relations and history between Japan and China, the massacre which started in the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937 is definitely remembered.
Japanese soldiers took the city of Nanjing under their control and started carrying out murder, rape and robbery. This massacre started in the month of December in 1937 and lasted till the month of March in 1938.
According to the estimates of historians and charity organizations of the time in Nanjing, between two and a half to three lakh people were put to death. Most of them were women and children.
A large number of women were also raped. However, most historians in Japan deny massacres on this scale. They accept the point of rape and murder but a large number deny it. It is also said that all these things happened during the war.
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war of china and japan
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, China. Japan launched this attack after an explosion that occurred near a Japanese-controlled railway line. During this, the Chinese soldiers could not compete with the Japanese soldiers and Japan took many Chinese areas under its control.
Japan strengthened its hold on China and China was engulfed in a civil war of Communists and Nationalists. China’s nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek declared Nanjing the national capital.
Many Japanese feel that Japan’s excesses in China have been exaggerated in the text books there. Although it is a historical fact that in 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria in China with great aggression.
This resulted in the beginning of a widespread war in 1937 and ended with the end of World War II in 1945 after the deaths of millions of Chinese.
East Asia was a battleground in the Second World War. The Second World War has played a big role in bringing national pride to the center in this area. China has come a long way in economic and military power in today’s date, but its past has also played a significant role in this journey.
- History of Insults in Text Books
China made its humiliating history a part of its textbooks and told the coming generation how much humiliation their country had to endure.
China keeps reminding its citizens how it suffered from the First Opium War of 1839 to the Second World War. Chinese citizens are not allowed to forget how humiliated Japan and the colonists of the West have been.
In 2014, China announced a holiday on December 13 every year in memory of those killed in Nanjing. China has also demanded an apology from Japan for the Nanjing massacre.
China had said that Shinzo Abe should come to the Nanjing Memorial Building and apologize. When UNESCO decided to save documents related to the Nanjing massacre as a world record, Japan strongly objected and stopped funding UNESCO.
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bitterness
According to Pew Research, there is also a lot of bitterness among citizens of Japan and China. According to Pew Research, only 11 percent of Japanese have a positive opinion about China, while 14 percent of Chinese have the right opinion about Japan.
It is said that the massacre in Nanjing during Mao’s era between 1949 and 1976 was neglected. One reason for this is that during that time there was a civil war between Communists and Nationalists in China.
Nationalists declared Nanjing the national capital, and in the 1930s very few communists lived in the city.
Unification was started in 1949 after the defeat of the Nationalists in China. The communists claim that they also won the war with the Japanese and also won the civil war.
Six years after Mao’s death, things changed rapidly. In July 1982, the Japanese Minister of Education published a text book and it covered the role of Japan in the Second World War.
- problems at the level of citizens
China felt that if Japan is forgetting its role, then it will not let it forget it. China opened a museum related to this massacre and it happened only a few weeks after the Japanese textbook. Before 1982, no documents were published in China regarding the Nanjing massacre.
China and Japan are the second and third largest economies in the world. The problem between the two countries is not only at the diplomatic level but also at the level of citizens.
There was a dispute between the two countries over two small islands. One island is Senkaku which is in Japan and the other island is Diaoyu which is in China. Both the countries had increased the patrol of their respective naval forces here.
If there is any dispute between the two countries, then the dead bodies of history are uprooted. On the other hand, when an attempt is made to improve the relationship, the past is remembered.
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‘Relationship is not good even once in 1500 years’
Taro Aso visited India in 2006 as the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan. At that time he said in a statement, “For more than 1500 years in the past, there has not been an incident in history when our relations with China have been good.”
In 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakui Tanaka visited China. He tried to improve relations with China during this visit. The Japan which had shown so much military aggression on China from the 1930s to the 40s, the same Chinese hero Mao had hospitalized the Japanese PM.
When Mao was asked about the apology from Japanese PM Kakui, he said that there is no need for it. Mao said that the communist revolution in China would not have been possible without the Japanese invasion.
- Enemy’s enemy, friend?
Even today China is ruled by the Communist Party and Xi Jinping is given the same status as Mao. Mao may have forgotten Japan’s past attack, but Xi Jinping has refreshed it. The tension between the two countries regarding the East China Sea is well known. Japan is also on the South China Sea with Taiwan, USA and Malaysia.
China is also in action regarding Japan’s growing relations with India. With the help of Japan, India is developing infrastructure on the border with China. On the other hand, North Korea remains a threat to Japan.
At the same time, good relations between North Korea and China are not hidden from anyone. If there is a history of hostility between China and Japan, then it is the same between India and China. In such a situation, it is not very difficult to understand the friendship of India and Japan.