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I just watched "Back to 1942" which shows a glimpse of WWII from the Chinese perspective. They had to cope with a famine AND a war, and lost ~20 million people

• yeukhon 11y ago
  Being a Chinese growing up in America, what you said is true and often I feel the Western civilization didn't appreciate the war in Asia until the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and even then I feel people see America as the sole savior in the pop culture. America's first battle in Africa was a huge casualty (echoes the stuff in the movie Fury). Of course no one is born out to succeed, but the truth is thousands died on the path to victory. Korean and Chinese had been fighting the Japanese long before Germany declaring war in Europe, way before 1937. For more than a decade, the Chinese had been fighting alone (well with very unpleasant support from the Western civilization like getting weapons at a very expensive rate and siding with the Japanese). Everyone else was still supplying industrial material to Japan, aiding and helping killing millions in Southern-Asia, because the rest of the world wanted to stay neutral. If the Chinese didn't hold back the Japanese, the entire Southern Asia would have fall in the hand of Japan in a few months (what the Japanese generals had promised their emperor). The British and the French armies did not stand a chance in their colonines against the Japanese. Soon May-in, First Lady of Republic China came to the U.S. and begged the U.S. Congress to help China [1]. I quote: "When Japan thrust total war on China in 1937 military experts of every nation did not give China even a ghost of a chance. But when Japan failed to bring China cringing to her knees as she vaunted, the world took solace in this phenomenon by declaring that they had overestimated Japan’s military might." It wasn't until late in the war did the Chinese receive air support (and many kind volunteers from the U.S. Army such as the Flying Tigers group) to help stabilize the war against Japan in China. But millions, were poured into the battlefield, untrained, uneducated, with little armor, fought against a modernized elite army from Japan. Oh not to mention the shitty Commander Stilwell who caused a huge causality of the allies in the Southern-Pacific/Burma...don't get me started there. The British hated him. The Chinese hated him (he seized control of an elite Chinese army division and lost 60% of them - that division stayed and fought the Japanese so hard the Japanese had to surrender). We had lost so many lives in WWII, including tens of thousands of American (some were recruited from U.S. territories that still don't have voting right in the Congress!). We can definitely improve history class by not just always focusing on American's effort. Even the local rebels in Europe helped the Allies to finish missions. Intelligence that the Chinese had provided to the Allies regarding the Japanese had helped Allies in attacking Japanese later in the war. [1]: http://china.usc.edu/soong-mei-ling-%E2%80%9Caddresses-house-respresentatives-and-senate%E2%80%9D-february-18-1943 http://china.usc.edu/soong-mei-ling-%E2%80%9Caddresses-house... -- edit -- For those who can comprehend Mandarin, you can watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QQtJoJ9Zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QQtJoJ9Zg (and other episodes).
  • berntb 11y ago
    How is the Chinese attitudes outside China to that the Communist Party killed many more Chinese than even the Japanese? (And probably a large reason for the focus on anti-Japanese films is just as a distraction from that?) I guess that there went my value on the coming Social Credit System. :-)
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    • Chathamization 11y ago
      > Americans didn't. That's not really true. Lend-lease, the American Volunteer Group, the embargo against Japan - these all predated Pearl Harbor. In fact, these were the impetus for Pearl Harbor.
  • east2west 11y ago
    You appear to have a view shaped by the Nationalist propaganda. The Flying Tigers were mercenaries recruited from US Naval aviation and Marine corps because the top commanders were more sympathetic to Chinese plight. They were in China before Pearl Harbor, hence so-called "volunteers." Russian pilots, also called "volunteers," helped defend Wuhan before Americans got there. The demise of Chinese Air Force was a direct result of incompetence on Madam Soon, who for political reason had a hand in procurement and wanted to save money until the war started. The Chinese pilots were exclusively recruited from the upper class and generally lacked skills and capabilities to mount effective campaigns or devise innovative tactics. The Kumingdon so mismanaged the war efforts that in 1945 Japanese force could still launch successful drive across China to improve their line of communication, and when American air power failed to stop Japanese advances, the American Commanding general, general Chennault wanted to fly in ammunitions to Chinese ground troops, like general Stilwell earlier advocated, generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (that is right, the husband of the first lady wasn't the president of China; in fact he lacked legality, but had legitimacy, for his rule during the entire war) refused because he couldn't be certain his troops wouldn't turn their guns on him and replace him with a competent leader. The performance of Chinese force during WWII was abysmal, which directly contributed to loss of the Outer Mongolia as the price for Soviets to open a second front against the Japanese. It is not just that Chinese troops were ill trained, ill equipped, and poorly led; they were ill clothed, ill fed, had no ammunition; the Chinese soldiers were worth more to his commander dead then alive because the commander could forge headcounts and pocket dead soldiers' pay. The entire government and the armed force were thoroughly corrupted. I just cannot let you cast aspersion on general Stilwell without challenge. He did clash repeatedly with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek because he wanted to fight the Japanese and the generalissimo did not. He wanted to equip and train Chinese Army, but the generalissimo only wanted to maintain his control over elite Chinese units because that is how he controlled China. An American once asked the commander of the best artillery unit, after patiently inspecting German made 150mm guns, why he didn't move his unit to the front line and actually fight, he was astounded when the commander replied that he didn't want to suffer loss and no longer being the best artillery unit in Chinese Army. The Chinese Expeditionary force to Burma was remote-controlled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who insisted that the entire force go through dangerous mountain range to retreat back into China rather than going to India. The units that obeyed and went back to Chine suffered such loss that they had to be reconstituted, while one brave commander took his troops to India saw his division forming the core of counter offensives later. The same commander, who was trained in US, would later train the main force defending Taiwan. Most of loss suffered by the Chinese Expeditionary force was non-combat causalities. Madam Soon May-in, as you call her, was greedy, corrupt, clever in PR, and did more than her part in losing China to the Communists. Her meddling in politics made it impossible for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's son to do even minor reforms to cleanse the government. Corruption was so bad that when a top commander correctly outed a Communist spy because the spy was above reproach, the spy correctly fingered another spy (they worked for different branches of Communists) in the Defense department because he was also clean, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek chastised his top commander for effectively saying no Nationalists could be clean. I couldn't make this up. I suggest you carefully read all sides before making your mind. I hate the Communist with all my heart but the Nationalist lost the mainland because they were corrupt, incompetent, and organized themselves on a classical Chinese patronage system, which ironically the Communists are doing their best to emulate. The corrupt but all powerful bureaucracy has reasserted itself, as it has done for two thousand years. The choice is suicide now, by attempting reform, or suicide later, by doing nothing. All the wounds are self-inflicted. The Chinese Communists are wisely choosing to wait, as the Empress Dowager did during the last era of Qin dynasty. It is truly a tragedy. The Chinese revolution, it turned out, wasn't necessary.
• trulyrichboat 11y ago
  "After the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the disruption of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders took the country on a path of economic development based on a market economy, without relinquishing the party's grip on political power." "The government resorted to nationalism, including an appeal to the CCP's anti-Japanese credentials, to reassert its legitimacy to lead the country and defuse the inevitable tensions that would accompany rapid economic growth. Today, surveys have shown that anti-Japanese sentiment in China is higher among the current generation than among the Chinese who lived through the occupation of the Second Sino-Japanese War." "Anti-Japanese sentiment can be seen in anti-Japanese war films produced and displayed in China. More than 200 anti-Japanese films are made in China each year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_Chi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Famine_deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Famine_deat...
  • theworstshill 11y ago
    After Nanking, I wouldn't call any of those movies anti-Japanese. How about historical? The Japanese were lucky they weren't completely annihilated from the face of the Earth by the US anyway (considering their tendencies in WW2, I personally wouldn't miss them).
• satori99 11y ago
  My Grandfather was an Australian Commando assigned to a secret British mission operating within China during the war. It is still the longest overland mission ever undertaken by the British Army. It was known as Mission 204 [1], or Tulip Force [2]. They were trained in Burma before entering China to help train the Chinese Nationalist Army in Guerrilla warfare, demolition, and try to encourage a resistance movement. The mission had limited success. Not many Australians, or anyone else, knows that Australian soldiers were under the command of a Chinese general in China during WWII. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_204 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_204 [2]: http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/farflung/ http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/farflung/