By Zhang Ming
Editor’s note: The author was trained in political science and works at Renmin University in China. He has widely published in Chinese and English. This piece first appeared in Chinese in the China Digital Times.
The Russia-Ukraine war has entered its fourth year. After Donald Trump returned to power, he became absolutely full of himself, and felt omnipotent. However, inexplicably, he chose the side of the aggressor as he began to think about a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine. In the plan so far Russia has not provided Ukraine with any guarantee of peace, not even a verbal promise, but instead demands Ukraine face reality and, according to Russia’s calculations, give in and essentially surrender. And when Trump and Zelensky met in the Oval Office on February 28, a rare scene in the history of diplomacy played out: blatant bullying in the White House, in front of reporters.
But there is nothing new under the sun. An analogous episode happened in China before. After the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, the city of Wuhan fell. At this time, China really had no cards to play. It had lost its entire navy, most of its air force, almost all of its German-equipped divisions, large tracts of territory had already fallen, and all coastal ports were lost. At this time Germany, China’s largest aid donor, sent people to China to mediate, asking China to recognize the situation, acknowledge reality, and make peace with Japan. However, if China agreed not only would it not be able to get its Northeast back, but China would also become a de facto vassal state of Japan. This reality is almost exactly the same as the reality that the United States wants Ukraine to recognize. The difference is that at that time Japan was strong and had great momentum, while today’s Russia’s strength is already close to spent. If it is forced to continue the war, it cannot triumph. Back then, the reason why Japan agreed to Germany’s mediation was that the protracted war strategy formulated by the Chinese government at the beginning had worked. The wiser factions in Japan had realized that the war with China would not be worth the cost. It would be a quagmire, wasting manpower and resources, yet failing to obtain the strategic materials, oil and rich iron ore, that Japan urgently needed. They wanted to withdraw from China and prepare for the subsequent southward advance.
However, Chiang Kai-shek flatly rejected Germany’s mediation, without even the slightest room for maneuver. There were various stories about this incident later, and many people have long accused Chiang Kai-shek of being a traitor. However, no matter how much historians have searched the historical evidence, they have not find any clues that Chiang Kai-shek betrayed his country to secretly make peace with Japan. The German envoy was surprised after being rejected, but Hitler did not scold Chiang Kai-shek, and the matter passed. If Chiang Kai-shek had gone to Berlin at that time, he would probably not have been received badly. Only later did Germany, Italy and Japan form their Tripartite Axis, and only then did Germany comply with Japan’s request, as it severed ties with China, canceled all arms contracts, and withdrew all German advisers in the country. Japan also declared that it would no longer consider Chiang Kai-shek as a negotiating partner, implying that cooler heads in China could rise up and replace him.
Of course, Chiang Kai-shek’s actions were criticized by some lesser elements in the country at the time. Their belief was that there was a huge gap in strength between China and Japan, and China simply could not resist. If it did, more people would die. This was the basic view of such people. Just as some people in China are saying now, staring at the bodies of Ukrainians, you cannot categorically conclude that it is right to continue resisting. But at that time, we Chinese saw the corpses of the fallen in the Nanjing Massacre, and the women who had been raped and killed by Japanese soldiers. These photos were available at the time, and many people saw them. After seeing them, should we have felt a similar lament and compromised quickly? Yet after watching the film and photographs, most Chinese people became even more determined to fight their war of resistance.
There are also those who ask, what’s wrong with compromise, with yielding? Morally, there is no absolute right or wrong on the question of resisting and dying versus not resisting any more. Didn’t France, they say, surrender back then? How many fewer people died? Yes, to this day, Pétain is still called by some a hero who saved France. What’s wrong with fewer deaths? Impeccable reasoning. However, there are no absolute truths in human history, and things must always be discussed in the context of specific historical conditions. When the Nazis were sweeping across Europe, should Britain have continued to support itself independently after the Dunkirk evacuation? In Britain, there were also strong calls for peace with Hitler and withdrawal from the war. Just imagine, if Britain had also surrendered, the United States would certainly have found it difficult to survive under a pincer attack from Germany and Japan. Then the world would have become the world of the Axis powers, especially the world of Hitler. The Jews naturally would have had no way to survive, but as an inferior race in the eyes of the Nazis, what would be the fate of the Chinese? Auschwitz and the other concentration camps demonstrated the fate of lesser peoples under the Nazis. Even the Slavs, also white people, were not considered humans in the eyes of the Germans. Needless to say, the non-white Chinese in the East would not have been seen as human either.
But some people say that the Japanese were different from the Nazis after all. But in fact, the Japan of that day, with its expanding militarism, had nothing in common with today’s Japan. The Chinese people could not have survived under the rule of that era’s Japanese if the latter had triumphed. Yes, the industry in Northeast China was very developed under Japanese rule at that time, but did the people in Northeast China actually live well? We grew up there and, asking the common people who remembered those days, and we learned that the life of the lower-class Chinese there was also not easy, even worse than that of the Koreans.
There was no time to discuss abstract morality, it was survive or perish. In the moment, the question was and is not whether we can survive, but whether the weak nations should be permitted to make tremendous sacrifices, so that we all ultimately can live. This kind of survival, living day to day if that — if you are an intellectual, would you actually be willing to placidly accept this?
Chiang Kai-shek did many less-than-admirable things in his life, but he was right in insisting on waging the War of Resistance. Although as Zhang Fakui said, we basically did not win any battles in that war, the Japanese advantage was particularly clear. After all, China’s military strength was inferior at that time, and many troops, such as the Sichuan Army, went out of Sichuan to fight the Japanese with homemade guns. Our industrial base was not the equivalent of others’. The Japanese could build first-class aircraft and aircraft carriers, but we had to import even gunboats and naval guns to equip them. If it were not for the strong assistance from the United States in the later period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, China, as a backward agricultural country, would have been competing against one of the world’s top industrial powers, and the disparity in weapons and equipment could not have been overcome in the least. However, at great sacrifice, China survived. It won the respect of the world and achieved its current status as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations.
I used to think that after World War II, the era of the law of the jungle in international politics had passed, that the era when big countries could bend small ones to their will, as in Munich, was gone forever. I never thought that everything would be turned upside down just by changing the president of the United States.
History can indeed repeat, but as people who understand history, we cannot play the pitiful role in history again. Remember, if there is no morality in this world, then people nominally alive will be nothing but walking corpses. Living like a walking corpse is not worth our effort, nor should ordinary people have to endure it.
