– ‘Entire nation’ –
Authorities have indirectly acknowledged modern Japan is not the same country as seven decades ago, with defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun telling reporters: “The parade is not targeting any other country, not targeting today’s Japan, not least targeting the Japanese people.”
But the Communist Party uses nationalism as a key part of its claim to a right to rule, and China’s official media have carried a litany of articles on past Japanese atrocities, with war dramas a constant theme on television.
The propaganda campaign has also focused on the resistance of “the entire Chinese nation” against Japan, obscuring the Communist Party’s rivalry with the then governing Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, who was defeated in the ensuing civil war and fled to Taiwan.
Recently China has only carried out such giant military shows once a decade, and always on the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1.
This one instead comes on the day after Japan formally surrendered in 1945 on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
“In some ways what they’re trying to do is say ‘Hey, look, we were on the right side of World War II,’” said Yonsei University’s Delury. “‘We were the good guys, we fought against the bad guys’.”
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