Jackson Chen
When people having conversation on the topic of national memory, it is usually about some remarkably events happened in the past. The event itself can be delightful to mentions or heartbreaking to think about. However, in the past century, the world was a ground of chaos. We probably gone through the most craziest century in human history. Specifically, the negative incidents such as the Worlds Wars and other regional conflicts were occupy a big portion of the 20th century timeline. The World War Two is the most horrendous event in terms of scale and death. Estimate over 80 million civilians and troops were sacrificed along with trillions dollars of destructions.
In September 2nd, China held parade at Beijing Tiananmen Square for 70 years after the victor of the WWII ———defeat over the Japan Imperialism Invaders. The event had been scheduled and announced for months before,and Chinese government put much of their attentions on the parade than the stock market collapsed. When the news began to talk about it in domestic and globally, a question rose in my mind: why China decided to hold this unprecedented parade in the such timing? Foreigner might think the number of 70 is important in Chinese culture. But from a native Chinese perspective, that is totally a myth. In fact, China had few WWII memorial in the past but they were never done that much advertising compare with 2015 one.
The government were not only well prepared on the parade, they also put their hands on manipulating people perceptions on the invader side. Without any cover up, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television selected to play tremendous amount of War TV series over and over again on mass media such as major television channels, websites even schools. There is only one target on Chinese government mind, Japanese; the purpose of the actions is to raise unnecessary hatred towards Japanese and some people described it as Anti-Japanese Sentiment.
In the speech of opening ceremony, President Xi insisted China is becoming a strong country through the 70 years ruled under the Communist state and will always take a position in the world as the Peace-keeper. Xi also promised to reduce 300,000 soldiers by 2017 to demonstrate the country is rising without any thread to the world. Nevertheless there were 12,000 soldiers, 200 air crafts plus tons of military weapons such as DF-21 missiles are attended in the parade. Not saying is wrong to showing one’s military “muscles” on it’s national parade, but made a loud noise of “check this out, we have so many advance technologies that will protect all citizens from potential invaders” sound suspicious. Depend on views of domestic citizens, it will make them feel a sense of secure for a while. However, the regional tension is rising to a higher level in negative way . Especially China relationships with Japan and countries along the South China sea are not in a good status because of maritime or territory dispute. Parade suppose to brings up peace and deliberate thoughts was going against it’s original intention or I should say sending tread to a specific nation is Chinese government original purpose. More specifically, remove civilians’ sights from domestic issues to forming negative sentiment toward Japanese is what the party’s leader want to achieve and indeed they succeed.
Incontestably, Japanese had done many awful, cold-blooded invasions before and during the World War on innocent citizens around the entire southeast Asia. However, they now became a “scapegoat” which responsible for domestic conflicts in China. In contrast, the Chinese government tactfully remove public focus from national economic downturn and environment/resources crisis to how the nation was badly suffer from Fascism aggressor from Japan. They recognized this parade is suppose to memorize veterans who fought and died in the frontline while learn from lessons of history. Instead, they distort people perspective toward Japanese through news and TV series which is potential spread a message that throw a fist back on Japan is the right solution. Obviously the leaders of Chinese government are not accountable on the society itself when sacrifices environment to achieve the shiny economic growth in the past decades. Meanwhile, the Communist party ignore the facts that is Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces made the most effort on defensing Japan invasion.
The World War Two is the most tragical chapter in the modern era, it has aftermath effect on people views on the Axis countries. I believe that many countries other than China had mark the end of World War Two as their national memory. The crucial lesson for the countries which provoked the war is to learn and correct their mistakes they did. In another hand, the countries who suffered from it should forgive and accept apologize from violated side. By this way, countries between countries will bond together and proceed to create harmony societies.
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