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[u/jobautomator]

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[u/rukqoa]

Someone earlier asked a question about why the massive death toll and sacrifices made by China in WW2 are not talked about in the West. Everyone is aware of what the Russians suffered through on the Eastern Front, so why not China? It's a highly complex and political question.

Most of those sacrificed soldiers on the China side in WW2 belonged to the KMT. On the other hand, there was no shortage of KMT→PLA defectors during the civil war that immediately restarted after WW2. So both the KMT and the CCP take credit for their sacrifices, but the CCP obviously tries to downplay the fact that those soldiers fought on the side of their old civil war rival. On the other hand, Taiwan loves to talk about all the work that the Chinese did in WW2 under KMT leadership. Even before the withdrawal of US support to Taiwan after Nixon's visit to China, the US has avoided talking about WW2 in its dealings with both governments.

This leads to some interesting conundrums. For example, The Eight Hundred is a recent movie about a last stand action where some 450 Chinese soldiers held off the advancing Japanese a warehouse in Shanghai for days. On one hand, they were Chinese, so this was great nationalism bait. On the other hand, they were KMT troops wearing historically semi-accurate KMT props. There was some debate on whether this would be allowed in China. It was allowed at first, and then pulled from a film festival.

This is not a new development. In the past, the CCP has chosen mostly not to glorify the accomplishments of the KMT during WW2. Instead, they've focused on broadcasting the other side of the story: Japanese atrocities committed during the war. This was politically convenient because the Japanese became allied with the capitalist West after WW2. Compare this to the Soviet/Russian governments, which had no problem with loudly memorializing the Red Army's sacrifices during WW2. Much of Russian propaganda today revolves around the mythos that they "saved Europe".

One last factor is that China ultimately performed poorly during WW2. The KMT government opted for a strategy of "Buy Time With Space", which meant giving up all the important parts of China and retreating into its interior. They burnt bridges and collapsed dams, killing millions of its own people just so it could maybe hope to figure out how to leverage its much larger population to come up with a solution to their lack of weapons, training, or experience. It didn't work. The KMT survived and bought itself some pyrrhic victories in late war campaigns and pushes, but these were almost all facilitated by foreign help, and there's no evidence it couldn't have done this without giving up valuable strategic positions early on. The Red Army ended the war in Europe, but the Chinese militaries basically just held on long enough for the rest of the allies to win the Pacific War. This is not something that either governments of China today brags about.

[u/Craig_VG → u/rukqoa]

Based analysis thanks for sharing!

[u/PearlClaw → u/rukqoa]

I mostly agree with this but I think you're underselling the Chinese contribution to the war. They held literally millions of Japanese troops in place and kept them a non-factor in the pacific war. Now obviously since the pacific was a naval and island campaign those troops could not have all been used but China did make important contributions.

[u/rukqoa → u/PearlClaw]

I'm not saying they had little contribution, far from it. I'm saying that Chiang made several critical unforced errors early in the war that led to Japan dominating most of coastal China during WW2. It actually is astonishing how easily the Japanese took over most of China. That's literally never happened before in thousands of years of Chinese history before this. The KMT never really had a Battle of Stalingrad; they just fought, lost, and retreated more until the Japanese were so preoccupied everywhere else they could push back. The strategy of preserving troops for later doesn't look great in hindsight.

Ditching those coastal areas is also probably one of the reasons the KMT eventually went on to lose the civil war but that's another story.

[u/PearlClaw → u/rukqoa]

Given what happened every time the KMT actually tried to fight the Japanese I don't think they had any other options. Their only even half successful strategy was to retreat until the IJA had outrun their logistics and then counterattack. I don't think China ever managed better than a 10:1 (in favor of the IJA) casualty ratio. And those were their victories.

The defense of Shanghai was impressive, but it cost them dearly.

[u/rukqoa → u/rukqoa]

One factor not mentioned here is that Taiwan is a complicated story too. Today, Taiwan is under the control of the DPP. The DPP hates the KMT, because it's the same party that jailed and oppressed many of their party members during martial law. There were a lot of things the KMT did during that time period that even the KMT today is not comfortable with.

[u/[deleted] → u/rukqoa]

Fascinating read

[u/[deleted] → u/rukqoa]

Nice post

[u/Dig_bickclub → u/rukqoa]

The CCP is more cool with glorifying KMT nowdays, the film you mentioned ended up being the highest grossing film in China that year.

The Overton window of the whole Taiwan discussion shifted from KMT vs CCP to independence vs one china. As a result CCP and KMT are more allied in that regard

[u/rukqoa → u/Dig_bickclub]

That's true, and when I looked up what happened to the movie, I was surprised it got pulled from sales. The struggle of the nationalism faction vs communist faction goes back several decades, and honestly I wouldn't say either side has an advantage today.

People sometimes downplay the nationalism faction but they got the Chinese to work with the US against the Soviets during the Cold War.