What could Japan actually do to assist Taiwan if China attacked? Could they step in militarily? Would they?
Right now Japan has the fourth largest navy ('scuse me, Self-Defence Force) in the world. Since much of Russia’s can’t actually float, that really makes it # 3, after the U.S. and Britain.
Now if you were them, and your economy depended on getting oil from the Middle East shipped through the Taiwan Strait, what sort of military equipment would you buy? (Remember, if you ever used it, you wouldn’t necessarily have to admit it was you.)
So, with that in mind, what sort of equipment do you suppose they’ve got out there in the Strait or thereabouts?
I read somewhere that the Japanese navy could sweep away China’s military in 5 days. Can’t remember where I read it though- I’m gullible too.
edit…i meant china’s navy
I hope it’s true. I like Japan.
wispy swiller,
Did you know about the[color=red] The Rape of Nanking[/color]?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
tribo.org/nanking/
princeton.edu/~nanking/
The level of astrocity as well as its scale is simply appalling. To this day the Japanese goverment still have yet to aknowledge and apologize to the victims. Most people in Japan today don’t know about it because their historians were ordered to omit this part of history-You won’t find it mentioned in their history testbooks. Even the publication of of the book The Rape of Nanking written by a Chinese American reporter Iris Chang was “postponed indefinitely” by the Japanese goverment.
The old Nanjing argument for hating Japan is not shared by most Taiwanese despite the effort the KMT used to socialize children to hate Japanese. Iris Chiang’s book has two fatal flaws. The first is that her academic objectivity was compromised by her emotional hatred for the Japanese. The second flaw is that she was pandering to Hollywood in the hopes of landing a movie deal (she mentions the lack of a Nanjing movie no fewer than three times in her book). Besides…remember 228? What about George Kerr’s book? It can go on forever…
Japan appears to be modifying its strategic stance in regard to Taiwan policy from a neutral arbiter to a regional partner. China’s economic and military rise can be seen as a threat to Japan. Japan has taken China off its foreign aid program and the recent sub incident further illustrated the threat China poses to Japan’s security. The Chinese education system, print and electronic media all promote an agressive stance toward Japan for the atrocities of WWII with complete disregard to the equally atrocious acts comitted by Chinese against Chinese during and following WWII.
Anybody else but me think Chang was murdered?
Imperial Japan was a lot like China today. Think the Chinese aren’t responsible for systematic murder and rapine?
I see this idea around more and more. I find it absurd. If China attacked Taiwan, you could expect moral support from Japan and nothing more. Japan is not going to risk war with China over Taiwan.
It would be quite the battle between the U.S. and Japan to see which could write the most polite stern note to China regarding any action against Taiwan.
Hmm…
I’d love to see the list of dates and places for those “equally atrocious acts” myself.
Which education system, print, or electronic media are promoting that list?
OOC
Nope, and her husband and psychiatrist don’t either, so probably not 
Things have to get much worse for Japan to take a stand, but I would not rule it out…especially if their friendships with the US and Taiwan continue to grow.
Relations between China and Japan are only getting worse. Japan wouldnt confront China alone, but barring a successful sneak attack by China (big possibility if something DOES happen in the strait), US-Japan-Taiwan would be a formidable obstacle.
Granted, Taiwan has to hold out long enough for such a situation to take shape. All the more reason to be better armed…
[quote=“wispy swiller”]Dave’s girl,
I’ve read Iris Chang’s book, I know about the atrocities, but that was a long time ago. They wouldn’t do it again. Japan is clean, civilized and the people are polite.[/quote]
That’s what everyone thought about the Germans in 1930.
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“wispy swiller”]Dave’s girl,
I’ve read Iris Chang’s book, I know about the atrocities, but that was a long time ago. They wouldn’t do it again. Japan is clean, civilized and the people are polite.[/quote]
That’s what everyone thought about the Germans in 1930.[/quote]
Thank you, Comrade Stalin. :bravo:
[quote=“OutofChaos”]
I’d love to see the list of dates and places for those “equally atrocious acts” myself.
Which education system, print, or electronic media are promoting that list?[/quote]
I am still awaiting "the list of dates and places for the equally atrocious acts comitted by Chinese against Chinese during … WWII. "
I am especially interested in those acts that the “Chinese education system, print and electronic media” show “complete disregard to.”
I am also still waiting to learn of which “education system, print, or electronic media are promoting that list” which the Chinese education system, print and electronic media are disregarding.
Where is the list of equally atrocious acts?
Who is promoting it?
Thank you.
OOC
“Two fatal flaws”
- Compromised academic objectivity
- Pandering
Well, a review of some critics shows that a few folks are on the other side of the issue. For example:
-The Wall Street Journal
- The Chicago Tribune
- The New York Times
- National Review
- Houston Chronicle
- Detroit News
- San Jose Mercury News
- San Francisco Bay Guardian
- Yale University, History Prof. Bartlett
- University of California, Berkeley, Dir. Institute East Asian Studies, Wakeman
They all agree Chang’s book is top-flight historical research and writing. Their exact quotes are available from the Penguin Book edition of
Most of those news sources you listed gave John Tesh’s latest album high marks as well. What’s your point?
I’d love to see the list of dates and places for those “equally atrocious acts” myself. [/quote]
The Internet is not exactly a library, and in the case of China, it would be hard to get at the statistics even if they are still available, but I did the best I could to oblige you:
ecoi.net, European Country of Origin Information Network.
From an Internet excerpt of Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine, foreword. (Caveat: this excerpt is reprinted on a website promoting Hindutva, an Indian nationalist movement. However, Mr. Becker, a former Guardian correspondent in China, is not affiliated with them.)
[quote]Propaganda photos, clearly falsified, showed wheat stems growing so densely together that children could sit atop them. . . . Those who dared question found themselves, at best, in detention like Marshal Peng Dehuai or, at worst, beaten to death in a “struggle session.” . . . [In] Xinyang prefecture in Henan province, . . . 12,000 people were “struggled against” for questioning–or being suspected of doubting–these miracle harvests.
. . .
[C]annibalism became common. People ate the flesh of corpses and, in insane rages, sometimes killed and boiled their offspring.
. . .
[T]he heaviest death tolls were recorded in provinces with ultra-leftist leaders who exaggerated harvests and forcibly seized large amounts of grain. Fatalities exceeded 7 million in each of several provinces: Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Sichuan. [/quote]Jasper Becker, “Sowing the Seeds of Famine,” Time Asia website.
I’d love to see the list of dates and places for those “equally atrocious acts” myself. [/quote]
The Internet is not exactly a library, and in the case of China, it would be hard to get at the statistics even if they are still available, but I did the best I could to oblige you:
xp+10k, I appreciate your work and I do respect your attempt. I realize a good number of events such as you describe took place in China under Communist rule after 1949. Documentation is available for many, if not all, of the worst.
However, your quotes and facts do not address my question of maowang’s original statement.
Maowang said, and I specificly bolded, “…the equally atrocious acts comitted by Chinese against Chinese during and following WWII. …”
Maowang said that “the Chinese education system, print and electronic media all promote an agressive stance toward Japan for the atrocities of WWII with complete disregard…” for the above mentioned acts.
I am asking for a list of dates and places of Chinese on Chinese acts that occured during WWII that are equally atrocious to the rape of Nanking.
I am especially interested in those events that occured during WWII that are being disregarded by the Chinese education system, print and electronic media.
I am interested in knowing what education system, print or electronic media is regarding these events that occured during WWII as noteworthy.
Thank you.
OOC
Sorry. Should have followed your boldface better. Also, you clarified later. I was so busy being astounded that I didn’t notice the clarification. Power of certain emotions, I guess. 
Can’t tell you what events are being ignored by Chinese media. That’s too tall of an order for me.
Political scientist R J Rummel has written on the topic of estimating and categorizing the deaths during the Sino-Japanese War (that started before WWII, I know), but he’s got his own special term, “democide,” for the killing of a human being by the government. It seems difficult to impossible (for me, in a short time, at least–prob’ly be better if I had his book) to sort out the data in the columns he displays on the Internet. For example, he appears to count KMT conscript deaths as democides. This may be so, but most people don’t consider such matters when they’re speaking of atrocities.
But it appears I can give you a couple of examples. Rummel, citing (apparently) his own estimate and/or other sources, puts the dead from Chiang Kai-Shek’s 1938 dynamiting of the Yellow River dikes at 440,000 (his middle estimate).
hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.TAB5.A.GIF
Rummel puts executions and massacres by the KMT at 50,000. Ibid.
His middle estimate for KMT-caused famine deaths, if I’m reading it right, is 2,250,000. Ibid.
On another page, he estimates that “10,214,000 [people were murdered] by the Chinese Nationalists. . . during World War II,” but I think he’s mixing conscripts in with other people. hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM
He’s very much an ideologue of some kind, but he appears to have done a lot of research. I’d be interested in reading the stuff of the other, maybe less ideologically inclined, sources he quotes.
As to the Communists during that period, I’m still trying to figure his data out.
Rummel’s politics appear to be pro-democracy, libertarian, peacenik, as far as I can tell from the site.