In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension.
Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history.
Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting Japanese delegations that without Japan’s invasion, there would be no People’s Republic of China.
“If Japan had not invaded, we would not be in power,” he said.
Mao was right. Japan’s invasion shattered the legitimacy of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. The KMT fought the bulk of the war, losing millions of soldiers, yet its defeats and corruption eroded public trust.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by contrast, used the chaos to expand their base, grow their guerrilla armies and present themselves as the “true” defenders of the people. Japan’s brutality, unintentionally, created the conditions for Mao’s rise.
Today, the CCP has made anti-Japanese sentiment one of the pillars of its nationalist identity.
From school textbooks to television dramas, from state-orchestrated commemorations to blockbuster films like Dead to Rights (南京照相館) or Evil Unbound (731), the message is drilled relentlessly: Japan is the eternal enemy, and the CCP is the eternal savior. The inconvenient facts — that the KMT bore the brunt of the fighting, and that Mao privately thanked Japan — are erased from the story. This is not remembrance. It is propaganda.
The CCP has hijacked the genuine pain of millions of Chinese and folded it into its own political machine. For the CCP, history is never about truth or healing; it is about control. By cultivating perpetual anger toward Japan, the CCP forges a shared sense of Han identity, while presenting itself as the guardian against foreign humiliation.
The result is an entire generation taught to see hatred as patriotic duty. Ask young Chinese today about World War II, and many would echo CCP talking points word for word. For them, remembering history means obeying the party’s narrative.
However, this narrative is profoundly dishonest. Mao’s private comments to Japanese delegations reveal the party’s real stance: Japan’s invasion was useful. It gave the CCP its chance. In public, Mao’s successors inflamed anti-Japanese sentiment to consolidate their legitimacy. In private, Mao knew who he had to thank. This double standard is the greatest political con of modern Chinese history.
Japan’s crimes were real. The massacres, the experiments of Unit 731, the suffering across Asia — these cannot be denied. Families like mine still carry those scars. However, acknowledging atrocity is not the same as weaponizing it. The CCP has turned memory into a cudgel, bludgeoning both domestic opinion and overseas Chinese communities into compliance with its version of history.
The victims deserve truth and dignity. Instead, they got manipulation. The suffering of millions has been twisted into a permanent propaganda campaign, not to honor the dead, but to keep the living in line.
History is complex. Memory should be honest. Under the CCP, memory is shackled. Until that changes, the ghosts of Nanjing — and of countless families across Asia — would remain trapped, not only by what Japan once did, but by how Beijing insists those wounds must be remembered.
Derek Low is a retired Singaporean professional who worked in the graphic arts industry for international printing press manufacturers. A third-generation Singaporean, he has both family memories of the Japanese occupation and first-hand experience of China’s transformation since the 1990s.
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