A group of Chinese historians said on Friday that misconceptions in China about the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese War tend to overemphasize the role played by Chinese communists in the resistance effort against the Japanese invasion.
The historians said this view was an exaggeration that was misleading, because the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which ruled China at the time, was actually the principal player in the war.
The issue was raised at a conference in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, while reviewing the history of the Battle of Taierzhuang (台兒莊) in 1938, in which the Chinese scored a major victory under the leadership of Li Tsung-jen (李宗仁), supreme commander of the KMT’s fifth War Zone.
Some participants at the conference, however, argued that the victory could be credited to collaboration between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party to fight the Japanese.
This perception of the battle, which gives credit to the Communists, is common in Chinese TV dramas about the Sino-Chinese War. These dramas often play up the prowess of the Communist troops and depict the KMT soldiers as a band of cowards.
Ma Zhonglian (馬仲廉), former curator of the Chinese People’s Revolution Military Museum, said it would be too much of a generalization to simply attribute the victory to a KMT-Communist alliance.
If that argument is to be convincing, there must be supporting evidence, Ma said.
Han Xinfu (韓信夫), a research fellow in modern history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said he disagrees with the idea of accentuating the role of a certain party in the war for political purposes.
Calling for a fair assessment of the war based on facts, Han said the KMT troops were undoubtedly responsible for the victory in the Battle of Taierzhuang, as they were the dominant force in the resistance against the Japanese.
Han said there is still a long way to go before Chinese academia can shed its political shackles and fairly judge the contributions of the KMT and the Communists in the war.
Wang Juying (王聚英), a member of a society that studies the history of the Sino-Japanese War, said the KMT and the Communists should stop denying each other’s role in the war and should seek to achieve a more consistent perception on this chapter in history.
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