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Who won China¡¦s war on fascism?
By Nathan Novak §õº~Án
Wednesday, Sep 08, 2010, Page 8
The People¡¦s Republic of China¡¦s (PRC) English-language
mouthpiece, the China Daily, announced in an Aug. 30 article that China would be
celebrating the ¡§65th anniversary of China¡¦s victory in the anti-Japanese war
and the world¡¦s anti-fascist war.¡¨
The article (¡§China makes great contributions to world¡¦s anti-fascist struggle¡¨)
mentions nothing of US or Allied participation in the ¡§anti-fascist war¡¨ ¡X also
known as World War II ¡X and mentions nothing about US contributions to China¡¦s
own war effort. It says nothing about the Chinese Nationalist Party¡¦s (KMT)
struggle in leading the Chinese war effort. It portrays China¡¦s role in the war
as key to Allied victory, even though the amount of actual fighting the
communists and the KMT did against the Japanese ¡X and not each other ¡X has been
subjected to a great deal of scrutiny.
Indeed, reading the article would lead the uninformed to believe that China
itself won the war, asserting that Chinese forces caused over 70 percent of
Japanese casualties, a clear downplay of US involvement and distortion of the
facts. China¡¦s war with Japan was far longer than the US war in the Pacific, and
the US also provided the Chinese with hundreds of millions of dollars of
financial and military aid.
A later article by Xinhua news agency quotes former US president Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and former British prime minister Winston Churchill as praising the
Chinese war effort (they were of course praising the KMT, not the Chinese
Communist Party [CCP]) as indispensible, although neither article recognizes any
contribution from foreign powers or debates whether the CCP and KMT, either
individually or collectively, could have beaten the Japanese without this help.
In fact, most experts agree that former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (¤ò¿AªF) and the
CCP were even more willing than Chiang Kai-shek (½±¤¶¥Û) and the KMT to bide their
time and hold back their best military units from fighting the Japanese in order
to use those forces in the future Chinese Civil War. Mao himself is known to
have thanked the Japanese for weakening Chiang and the KMT during the war.
While China celebrates its victory over fascism, perhaps it would be helpful to
discuss exactly what sort of benefits China has gained from victory over the
¡§fascists.¡¨ This requires us to take a look at what ¡§fascism¡¨ actually is.
Key characteristics of fascism include strong, often belligerent, nationalism;
corporate organization of state, economy and society; and either
state-sponsored socialism or heavy state investment in the economy.
A look at these key characteristics of fascism and comparing them to China¡¦s
current political, economic and social systems, one would have to ask which
conquered which: Did China conquer fascism, or did fascism conquer China?
China has certainly not been lacking in nationalist bellicosity since 1945. And
as China¡¦s military capabilities and economic clout have grown, especially since
the 2008 financial crisis, experts and politicians alike have expressed concern
over China¡¦s increasingly vocal discontent with the international system in
general and US policies in particular. China¡¦s continuing claims to Taiwan, as
well as its growing adventurism in the South China Sea and the waters
surrounding the Korean Peninsula, further demonstrate China¡¦s growing
assertiveness.
The corporate organization of state, economy and society in China almost goes
without saying. Although economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s attempted
to create a sense of local economic initiative and decentralization of
authority, the latest reports show Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE) gaining
market share in China and edging private enterprises out.
Further state investment in SOEs occurred following the 2008 financial crisis,
and SOEs have benefited greatly from the government¡¦s stimulus package.
Moreover, anyone who believes that the CCP is no longer a Marxist-Leninist
organization is only partly correct: China is no longer ideologically Marxist,
but it is certainly Leninist. The top-down Leninist party structure and its
concentration of power among a group of top party members resembles more closely
a CEO and board of directors of a corporation than it does any other authority
structure. Indeed, authoritarianism in any form, regardless of economic
organization, strongly resembles fascism.
Even though Beijing has in the past touted ¡§greater democratization,¡¨ that
democratization occurs within the CCP itself and not within greater Chinese
society.
What ¡§greater democratization¡¨ within the CCP has amounted to, it seems, is that
individual party members and certain groups within the party are allowed to
express their ideas to some extent. However, in the end they must toe the party
line after the party leadership makes decisions. This still demonstrates a
strong downward flow of authority. This is still a Leninist-style corporatist
state.
Taking these developments into account ¡X China¡¦s growing nationalism, increasing
government involvement in the economy (while still paying lip service to Marxist
socialism) and the corporate organization of the state, economy and society ¡X
one has to wonder exactly what the Chinese government is celebrating. Are they
celebrating China¡¦s victory over fascism, or are they celebrating fascism¡¦s
victory over China?
Nathan Novak studies China and the Asia-Pacific region with particular focus on
cross-strait relations at National Sun Yat-sen University.
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