1895-1945: China-Japan Feud
In more recent history, China first knew our neighbor Japan's most
delightful side as the great Asian power, after losing the first Sino-
Japanese war (1895). Japan demanded war reparations to the tune of 13,600
tons of silver, equivalent of 2x Chinese government's year revenue. We were
forced to pay high interest loans and lost Taiwan and Diaoyudao with the
same treaty. Japan used the payments to militarize,
live high, and export revolution and turmoil to neighboring countries,
including Russia,Korea and China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War
The huge payments to Japan hobbled the Chinese-Manchurian government
and resulted in its chaotic demise. After 10+ years of trying to sorting
out the chaotic aftermath, by the end of 1920s China again had a more or
less legitimate government, KMT with its economic heart in the booming
Yangtze delta. The Chinese hoped to work in peace and rebuild its
tattered economy. That was 30 years after 1895, we were even ready to
forget and forgive the robbery of 1895.
Unfortunately Japan was not going to allow China's peaceful rebuilding to
happen because Japan wanted to safeguard its stolen gains in Manchuria,
Taiwan, Korea and Diaoyudao. To that end, Japan waged the 2nd Sino-Japanese
war, 8 years worth of rapes and murder in which 10 million (or 20 million by
other estimates) Chinese perished. In other words, around one out of every 30 Chinese
died by Japanese invasion, mostly civilians, through various imaginative, traumatic,
pseudo-scientific means our Japanese neighbor thought of (731).
More than 10 years after 911, Americans still mourn the loss of 3000 people
in the WTC. More than 70 years after Pearl Harbor, Americans still
commemorate the loss of lives in the Japanese sneak attack. Only the scale
of Japanese invasion was 3000 times the loss of September 11th or Pearl
Harbor. In other words, it was a 911/Pearl Harbor every day for Chinese
people for 8 hellish years. Most Chinese family still mourn some family
member lost in that period. Every day is an anniversary of some infamous
incident. As a nation we developed PTSD and deep suspicion of our lovely
neighbor Japan. PTSD was symptomatic in many of our irrational judgement
and policy errors since 1945, but at the certain point, we are ready to forgive
and move on to rebuild peacefully.
And now, Japan is electing a Prime minister who again and again backtracks
on the Japanese history of aggression in East Asia. The same prime
minister is trying to remove the pacifist clause from Japanese post-war
constitution (since the history of aggression is in doubt, why so pacifist?)
and allow Japan to rebuild its military. Is this closet Fascist blaming
China for becoming nationalistic?
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130703-702576.html
Yes it's been 70 years. But Japan always has an unpredictable side, a
dangerous and cruel streak, as we in the neighborhood had witnessed. We are
ready to forgive and forget only when the Japanese and its leaders would
stop saying "sometimes we feel sorry, sometimes, we don't feel so sorry
after all... Wait, what do we have to be sorry about? .... Oh that old
grudge of 10 million murdered and more raped... I was hoping you'd have
forgotten by now... I was ever so slow and careful in trying to keep my
stolen rocks in the pacific, why are you so aggressive in disputing it? I
condemn it! America, please protect pretty little me and fight our big bad
neighbors."
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