Japan’s forces might have turned toward the USSR, Southeast Asia, or even British India. If China had surrendered in 1938, Japan would have controlled China for a generation or more. Nonetheless, China’s leader, the Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek, along with his unlikely allies, the Communists, refused to surrender, retreating inland to carry on resistance. Many outside observers assumed that China could not hold out, and the most likely scenario was a Japanese victory over China. Most of eastern China lay in Japanese hands: Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan.
A year later, by mid-1938, the Chinese military situation was desperate. On July 7, 1937, a clash between Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge, just outside Beijing, led to all-out war.
Courtesy Rana Mitterīut overall, was the Chinese contribution to the war really so important? Consider a “what if” scenario. Rana Mitter is a professor of Chinese history and politics at the University of Oxford. Some 14 million Chinese died and up to 100 million became refugees during the eight years of the conflict with Japan from 1937 to 1945. READ: The ‘Chinese Schindler’ who saved thousands of JewsĬhinese suffering during the war is not in dispute. Yet today, China’s memory of the war is becoming more, not less, important, as we move further away from it.Īnd many in China are becoming resentful that the West fails to remember that China was itself a significant player in the eventual Allied victory. In the West, many will see the military hardware and the troops that will, no doubt, be at the center of the event.īut relatively few will remember a historical fact that underpins the ceremony: China was the first country to enter what would become the Second World War, and it was the ally of the United States and the British empire from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941, to the Japanese surrender in 1945. On Thursday, there will be a major parade in the heart of Beijing, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia.
0 kommentar(er)
