Sino-Japanese War still stings China 120 years later

[Aepsilons]

Japan has chosen the path to emulate western imperialism with which european used to cover the whole world to get what they want, the same system which destroyed american native civilizations and put africa into chaos and enslavement for countless generations to come, and japan have certainly proven themselves to their european teachers. And indeed there is no need to fool anyone, at least the current generation of japanese do not believe taking that path was a mistake.

To this, I would like to respond with a poem written by the Emperor Meiji,


松 - Matsu
(The Pine Tree)

嵐の世界では
そこましょう全く揺れできなく
私たち人間の心の中で。
松として残る
ルートでストンに深い沈ん


In a world of storms
Let there be no wavering
Of our human hearts;
Remain as the pine tree
With root sunk deep in stone

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Of course it will sting. It will sting for as long as we have recorded history.

But the important thing is how to take care of our own people, right here and right now. If China becomes a developed country in the next few decades, we won't have to worry about foreigners pushing us around ever again.

Peace is maintained by strength.

 

[ComradeNam]

Lonely Japanese VS Chinese 50cent Army.

 

[sweetgrape]

Formosa was returned to China but if Senkaku was your territory, why didn't ROC take it.

ROC admit Diaoyu belong to Japan? you said you know the history between China and Japan, but from your comments, you know sh!t.

Full Text: Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China

Yes, but Chinese consider all those territories conquered by Imperial Qing Army as the historical Chinese land and wanted to reconquer the breakaway regions after the Qing Dynasty was ousted. You don't bother to know how they conquered it or what they did with the natives.

Qing is just a dynasty of China in the history, why can't re claim it is territory of China, while you indian even want inheriting South Tibet from Colonist Britain.

 

[Tractor]

To this, I would like to respond with a poem written by the Emperor Meiji,


松 - Matsu
(The Pine Tree)

嵐の世界では
そこましょう全く揺れできなく
私たち人間の心の中で。
松として残る
ルートでストンに深い沈ん


In a world of storms
Let there be no wavering
Of our human hearts;
Remain as the pine tree
With root sunk deep in stone

I can understand the poem almost thoroughly just without the last line which no root and stone I see by reading the Chinese characters.

 

[Nike]

Taiping was not a reaction to conservative/modernists, its simply another classic peasant rebellion except instead of someone claiming to be Maitreya,Hong Xiuquan was the brother of Jesus.

The Taiping rebellion was anti foreigners,anti Confucian conservatism(basically the reason why they didn't win),appealed to the stigmatized ie Hakka and Zhuang while the Manchus were a scapegoat to attract Ming loyalists as well as general discontent.


I'm afraid I'm not the one whitewashing or flat out distorting history.

Industrialization and Modernization doesn't necessarily rely on conquering other territories.

You're trying to legitimize Japanese colonization of other sovereign entities as a noble effort to defeat the "White" man,as I thought the Japanese have no remorse for their actions.

I will not trying to made a fool of China or everyone, but let me blatantly put this way

Qing China is too corrupt at the time, those prevalent corruption in Qing court and officials coupled with their antiquated way of thinking bring more harm to themselves than their external adversary in which Japan and the Western power. Don't you think Taiping and Boxing rebellion and Warlord Era didn't bring further destruction into China society at the time? Japan as predatory power at the time, living in era of Imperial ages doing what any other major power would do, eaten the weak and getting themselves more stronger from that. I am absolutely sure, if the Qing China would do the same thing what the Japanese did if they given the chance (with the preposition of firepower, technological advantage, military prowess and National unity) , every nation and country would do the same thing. At the time humanity is not as advanced as today, there is only law of jungle in World politics.

 

[Nike]

Industrialization =/= Colonization,it doesn't matter if European powers were colonizing the globe,Japanese had a chance to help China grow and prosper but instead they chose the path of sword.

Again you echo the sentiments of the Yasukuni shrine "liberating" your unfortunate kin

Japan Empire or any other country at the time doesn't have a moral obligation to help others. Your Qing empire at the time doing their own expansion and subjugated of any nation in their proper, don't you forget about Ten Great Campaign of Emperor Qian Long? I can say it blatantly, China (Qing) at the time is not any better than Japan morally. It was Japan who can consolidated and managing their own internal resources to get a much better results and prevailed over Qing weakness.

 

[Aepsilons]

I can understand the poem almost thoroughly just without the last line which no root and stone I see by reading the Chinese characters.

Yes, we Japanese use Kanji (Hanzi) characters in our writing script. In addition to Kanji, we also use Katakana and Hiragana script.

 

[JSCh]

The world before WWII is a horrible place. With might means right and constant war between nations.

Humanity would like to think that they have progress beyond that after the establishment of the post WWII order.

And to sustain the relatively peaceful world today, there is a needs to recognized past atrocities as wrong.

Only by doing that, then we can ensure that the order could be sustained and not be repeated.

The Japanese elite has to come clean and teach their young what really happen and teach them that such acts are WRONG by sincerely atone for their mistake.

 

[TaiShang]

Looks like it is a vicious cycle. Certain actions and ensuing reactions pull the two nations deep into a quagmire.

China and Japan were talking about a trilateral-FTA just a few years back and I remember I did a PPT presentation in class on this in 2010!

So much has changed ever since.

I guess we can decide to look at an outside factor, rather than each other, to find out the root cause.

I guess US's rebalance was designed to do just this and it seems to have been working.

Pivot led to two things (in general), one was calculated; the other, not calculated.

1. It encouraged Japan's (governmental) assertiveness and re-militarization. Japan sided more closely (anti-China) (mostly Western) forces.

2. It further reinforced the China-Russia partnership. The fault lines and bloc-politics is so clear now.

Take out "the pivot," most of the problems are solved almost naturally.

 

[Aepsilons]

Looks like it is a vicious cycle. Certain actions and ensuing reactions pull the two nations deep into a quagmire.

China and Japan were talking about a trilateral-FTA just a few years back and I remember I did a PPT presentation in class on this in 2010!

So much has changed ever since.

I guess we can decide to look at an outside factor, rather than each other, to find out the root cause.

I guess US's rebalance was designed to do just this and it seems to have been working.

Pivot led to two things (in general), one was calculated; the other, not calculated.

1. It encouraged Japan's (governmental) assertiveness and re-militarization. Japan sided more closely (anti-China) (mostly Western) forces.

2. It further reinforced the China-Russia partnership. The fault lines and bloc-politics is so clear now.

Take out "the pivot," most of the problems are solved almost naturally.

To be honest with you when i first joined PDF, i had expected to find more moderate minded Chinese posters, but my 2 months here have led me to see that the majority of Chinese posters hold a very strong view against Japan, some eve proposing nuclear strikes, which , to me, is quite aggressive.

And I thought the right wing lunatics in Japanese defense forums were the only ones that were impossible to debate with.

@TaiShang , I would say that a great majority of Japanese citizens have a pragmatic view on the situation between Japan and China. Many want a cooperative and friendly relationship, but at the same time, the recent infringments and news media of Chinese overbearing policies in South China Sea, and now in the Senkakus -- it is concerning for many of us. The citizens of Japan, if i had to describe their feelings regarding China, it would be more "concerned" than "hateful".

I remain positive, however. I try to keep an optimistic approach. I think that the only way for the two partners to address this issue would be if Japan ceases our protestation towards China's ADIZ. Both leaders would have to have a mutual agreement of not policizing the Senkakus any further.

Sometimes, i just don't know. Is it possible to resolve this issue? I like to hope that we can. But , honestly, I don't know...

 

[xunzi]

Japan Empire or any other country at the time doesn't have a moral obligation to help others. Your Qing empire at the time doing their own expansion and subjugated of any nation in their proper, don't you forget about Ten Great Campaign of Emperor Qian Long? I can say it blatantly, China (Qing) at the time is not any better than Japan morally. It was Japan who can consolidated and managing their own internal resources to get a much better results and prevailed over Qing weakness.

My friend, it is not about the invasion that make us hate Japan. It is the atrocity they committed against innocent people. Did the Qing soldiers raped baby and old women and then chop their head off during their campaign? You see, our campaign is about subjugation and putting law and order in China proper which happen to expand our empire. It is a forgone conclusion. The Qing weakness is they became complacent after Qianlong reign. The real figure that broke the Qing's camel back is not Japan, it was the British. The First Opium War.

 

[Aepsilons]

My friend, it is not about the invasion that make us hate Japan. It is the atrocity they committed against innocent people. Did the Qing soldiers raped baby and old women and then chop their head off during their campaign? You see, our campaign is about subjugation and putting law and order in China proper which happen to expand our empire. It is a forgone conclusion. The Qing weakness is they became complacent after Qianlong reign. The real figure that broke the Qing's camel back is not Japan, it was the British. The First Opium War.

There were multiple factors that led to the demise of the Great Qing Dynasty:

1 - Backward Imperialism. The last rulers of Qing Dynasty saw themselves as divine rulers of a perfect nation, and saw European inventions (such as the musket and cannons) to be useless dirt. Therefore they didn't industrialise as the Japanese did (Meiji Restoration), and therefore they seriously lacked behind.

2 - Corruption. The Dowager Queen made a right mess of things when she took the real ruling power from her grandson, the true Emperor who wanted to industrialise. The Dowager Queen took military funding to build herself a grand Summer Palace, which practically stopped Chinese military development. Her backward ideologies influenced prominent government officials, who ignored the cries of starved commoners and sat behind their wall of riches, blissfully oblivious to the threat of Europeans.

3 - Foreign invasion. The invasion by Europeans was made easy by Qing Dynasty's backward military - the majority of the outnumbering Chinese Navy was sunk in less than a week (what use were wooden junks to steel monsters?). The British then subsequently supplied opium to China, and when the Qing government refused to trade opium, the Brits used it as an excuse to openly invade China, split Chinese territories in unequal treaties, committed atrocious things to the Chinese population and utterly undermined Qing rule.

4 - Rise of Nationalism. Intellectuals saw the only way to defeat the Europeans was to use European technologies against them, and hence the overthrow of the corrupt and out-dated Imperialist Qing Dynasty.

 

[xunzi]

There were multiple factors that led to the demise of the Great Qing Dynasty:

1 - Backward Imperialism. The last rulers of Qing Dynasty saw themselves as divine rulers of a perfect nation, and saw European inventions (such as the musket and cannons) to be useless dirt. Therefore they didn't industrialise as the Japanese did (Meiji Restoration), and therefore they seriously lacked behind.

2 - Corruption. The Dowager Queen made a right mess of things when she took the real ruling power from her grandson, the true Emperor who wanted to industrialise. The Dowager Queen took military funding to build herself a grand Summer Palace, which practically stopped Chinese military development. Her backward ideologies influenced prominent government officials, who ignored the cries of starved commoners and sat behind their wall of riches, blissfully oblivious to the threat of Europeans.

3 - Foreign invasion. The invasion by Europeans was made easy by Qing Dynasty's backward military - the majority of the outnumbering Chinese Navy was sunk in less than a week (what use were wooden junks to steel monsters?). The British then subsequently supplied opium to China, and when the Qing government refused to trade opium, the Brits used it as an excuse to openly invade China, split Chinese territories in unequal treaties, committed atrocious things to the Chinese population and utterly undermined Qing rule.

4 - Rise of Nationalism. Intellectuals saw the only way to defeat the Europeans was to use European technologies against them, and hence the overthrow of the corrupt and out-dated Imperialist Qing Dynasty.

Very well said, my friend Nihon! Most successful dynasties in China last for about 200-300 years. Complacency always kick in in the later half. It happens. We have to avoid the mistake our ancestors made which led to our ancestors being bully by foreign power. Today, it would be very difficult to bully us. I am very confident our PLA will protect us from foreign invaders.

 

[Cossack25A1]

There were multiple factors that led to the demise of the Great Qing Dynasty:

1 - Backward Imperialism. The last rulers of Qing Dynasty saw themselves as divine rulers of a perfect nation, and saw European inventions (such as the musket and cannons) to be useless dirt. Therefore they didn't industrialise as the Japanese did (Meiji Restoration), and therefore they seriously lacked behind.

I can't say the musket is European invention though the Europeans improved the tech. I think it was the Chinese who invented musket which was developed from their hand cannon.