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The KMT, CCPˇ¦s Third United Front
Friday, Sep 17, 2010, Page 8
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) are working together again and this time it seems that theyˇ¦re
competing to see which is the most Chinese. Neither side is beyond stooping to
historical revisionism, instigating fights with neighboring countries or
brainwashing their people in pursuit of this goal. Itˇ¦s a tit-for-tat war of
words and deeds that will soon have both sides claiming to be the sole inventor
of the printing press, gunpowder and the compass.
Launching this most recent round of vitriol was an editorial by CCP mouthpiece
the Peopleˇ¦s Daily claiming that the CCP was the true slayer of the Japanese
Imperial Army in World War II and that the upstart KMT did little in the fight
to save the motherland. The KMTˇ¦s own President Ma Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E) responded on
Soldierˇ¦s Day by saying that no, it was actually the KMT who defeated the
Japanese. He went on to say: ˇ§The public must not forget about this period, nor
should we allow the history to be altered or distorted,ˇ¨ without at all seeing
the irony in what he was saying. It doesnˇ¦t take two semesters of world history
to know that a substantial portion of the Chinese world would be speaking
Japanese now if it werenˇ¦t for the bombs rained down on Japan by US planes.
Neither the KMT nor the CCP took back Taiwan or any part of the mainland ˇX they
were handed over to them by the US.
This united historical revisionism doesnˇ¦t just stop at vilifying the Japanese.
The KMT is now following in the CCPˇ¦s footsteps by rewriting history books as
well. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education unveiled its new pet project to
brainwash the youth of Taiwan, namely a revised history curriculum that doubles
the amount of Chinese history taught at the expense of both local and world
history. It makes one wonder how the edited history textbooks will approach
World War II. Will the US even play a role in the text, or will it be a unified
Chinese nation that whipped that cur, the Japanese?
The CCP and the KMT arenˇ¦t going to simply stop there. Now theyˇ¦re riling up a
fresh dispute with Japan over some extremely important rocks in the East China
Sea, saying that itˇ¦s a simple matter of fishermenˇ¦s rights. After all, doesnˇ¦t
the united Chinese nation have a claim to any and all territory near its
borders, or where any person with a trace of Chinese descent once lived? Ignore
the fact that the Ryukyu Islands are part of a contiguous chain that has long
been inhabited by Japanese and that they have been used in the past by the US to
mount attacks on the Japanese mainland, or that they could be used now to deny
US Navy access to eastern Taiwan, and you might wonder what the big fuss is
about. The KMT usually claims that itˇ¦s just about fish and sovereignty, but
itˇ¦s obvious that the reasons for sending coast guard vessels to eyeball the
Japanese go a lot deeper than that, especially coming so soon after a similar
Chinese standoff.
What all this appears to constitute is the dawn of a Third United Front between
the erstwhile enemy parties. The First United Front from 1924 to 1927 saw the
CCP and KMT working together to end the era of warlordism in China, while in the
Second United Front they just agreed to quit shooting openly at each other to
fight the invading Japanese instead. In this third, unwritten united front, the
goals of the CCP and KMT are unification and regional hegemony. Theyˇ¦ve already
gone a long way down the unification road with the Economic Cooperation
Framework Agreement (ECFA) ˇX and more agreements are sure to follow ˇX and now we
are seeing a hint as to the direction these parties will take to gain regional
hegemony.
However, KMT leaders should read their history books well, because neither of
the first two united fronts worked out in the end, especially with both sides
trying to out-Chinese each other and rule the nation they believe is theirs
alone.
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