Last week was China’s ninth national memorial day for the victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. As part of China, schools at all levels in Hong Kong held various activities to mourn the victims. In 2021, schools were mandatorily requested by the Education Bureau (EDB) to hold a memorial for the first time, but it got into trouble: some primary school students were horrified to tears by the EDB-assigned massacre documentary film.
This year, EDB still recommended the same film, only reminding the teachers that such teaching materials inevitably contain disturbing content and should be used with caution.
Hong Kong’s education authority has never recommended using disturbing materials in school. Why the exception for the Nanjing Massacre?
Given its alleged historical importance, why was the national memorial day for the massacre not initiated immediately after the surrender of Japan but 68 years after that? And why did the inscription on the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, written in 1949, never mention the massacre and the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression?” Since 1949, Mao Zedong, on the contrary, thanked Japan several times for invading China.
The reason is simple: the communists had a vested interest in the Japanese invasion of China. In the first half of the 1930s, they were on an ebb. They kept on fighting against sieges by the Nationalist Government, evacuated their base in Jiangxi, lost great strength after the Long March, and it was not until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 that they were finally recognized by the Nationalists, with a united front formed and the communists reorganized into the national army.
However, instead of fighting against the Japanese as they alleged, the communists actually focused on expansion in central China. What they did in 1937–45 was in line with their saying at the time, that is, 70 percent development (by extending their revolutionary bases), 20 percent handling (conflicts with the Nationalist Government), and 10 percent fighting against Japan. In other words, the War gave the communists the long-awaited opportunity to build their subsequent strength.
It is, therefore, not difficult to understand why the communists never had a high-profile commemoration of the war and the massacre after communist China was formed. They even gave up requesting war reparations from Japan.
However, the situation changed after the Cultural Revolution. To reinforce its legitimacy, the communists tried to consolidate its historical legitimacy by implanting nationalism among the people. Promoting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) central role in the resistance war against the Japanese is considered an indispensable source of legitimacy, and the Chinese were requested to believe without question that the key to the victory in the War was the CCP’s correct ideological and political line, which was the communists’ heroic contribution to the country’s first-ever total victory in an anti-imperialistic war in modern China, marking China’s historical turning point from national disaster to great rejuvenation.
Indoctrination of anti-Japanese sentiment becomes mandatory in education as if the war is still going on. The “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” matters to the CCP so much that they revised its starting year, making it 1931 rather than 1937, so that they could monopolize the narrative of a longer historical period and make the traditional slogan “No CCP, no New China” more well-justified, in their own way.
As a result, to the communists, whoever doubts the CCP’s self-acclaimed role in the war has committed the crime of historical nihilism, smearing the heroes, leaders, and people with some kind of ulterior political motive. A publication by the CCP’s academy of social sciences admits that the criticism of historical nihilism matters to the regime’s historical justification and legitimacy, unambiguously illustrating the nature of history as a political tool to the communists.
An additional advantage of monopolizing the narrative of the War is that it helps to cover up their mischief during the war period, such as the massive cultivation of opium, the revenue from which accounted for nearly 80 percent of the total of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border government.
It is clear that memorial services for the Nanjing massacre and all other war-related incidents are not purely for learning history but for constructing and consolidating an ideology to justify the legitimacy of the shaky Chinese communist regime. This is certainly a kind of brainwashing education with a sense of unquestionable loyalty to the party imbued in the mind of the people. This is the CCP’s desperate last-ditch struggle before its final demise. Parents and students should remember that they are taught in school with a political purpose, and everything learned should be crosschecked.
