The position of China in World War Two
In China today, the Communist Party mounted a massive military parade through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square (the name means ‘The Square of Heavenly Peace’) to mark the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan and the end of the Second World War. Except, of course, that the Japanese were not defeated in China (they capitulated after the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japan itself) and the Communists played a minor role in combating the Japanese invaders (most of the resistance came from the Nationalists).
The book I am currently reading – “The Storm Of War”, an account of the Second World War by Andrew Roberts – notes:
“Western accounts of the war often minimise, to the point of sometimes ignoring it altogether, the experience of China, despite the fact that fifteen million of those who died in the conflict – a full 30 per cent – were Chinese. It was the Chinese who held down half of Japan’s fighting strength throughout the war, and around 70 per cent of the effort was undertaken by the Kuomintang (Nationalist) forces under their generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek, based at Chunking. By contrast the Communists under Mao Zedong were, as Max Hastings has put it, at best merely ‘an irritant’ to Japan.”
Remember those figures: 15 million Chinese dead and almost a third of all the victims of the war. They don’t teach that in British or American schools, do they?
September 3rd, 2015 at 6:14 pm
well, yes and yes; but I remain a Mao supporter; after all he brought back the art and science of acupuncture; when Nixon went to visit Mao in 1972, acupuncture was finally imported to the West.
My infinite gratefulness to both from me and especially all of my patients.
September 3rd, 2015 at 6:52 pm
Well, I have to differ with you, Augusto. First, I am highly skeptical about the ‘science’ behind acupuncture. As Wikipedia states:
“The conclusions of many trials and numerous systematic reviews of acupuncture are largely inconsistent. An overview of Cochrane reviews found that acupuncture is not effective for a wide range of conditions but there is some evidence that it may have a beneficial effect for eight conditions. There are other conditions for which there is not enough high-quality evidence to draw any clear conclusions about efficacy. An overview of high-quality Cochrane reviews suggests that acupuncture may alleviate certain kinds of pain. A systematic review of systematic reviews found numerous contradictions in the evidence regarding acupuncture’s effectiveness for treating pain.”
But, in any case, one cannot set such an issue against the immense suffering caused by Mao.
He spent up to 60% of the state budget on defence as part of a huge effort to seek superpower status, while spending on education and health was a mere 8%. He collectivised the farms, exported grain to the Soviet Union, and launched the Great Leap Forward, as a result of which the average daily calorie intake fell to 1,535 (comparable to those suffered by the inmates at Auschwitz) resulting in 38 million deaths (22 million in the single year of 1960).
Overall, according to Chung & Halliday, in Mao’s 27 year rule of terror, some 27 million died in prison and labour camps and close to 38 million died of starvation in the great famine, with a total death toll of at least 70 million.
See my book review here: http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/Biographies#Mao