Unravelling the History of Japan and China Series How much damage did Japan's war of aggression do to China? How much damage did Japan inflict on China? Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Japan Laiyuan: Xinhua 07/07/2005 Independent Media E-wave Tokyo 07/10/2021 |
 China's total war against Japanese aggression in World War II, the Japanese surrender ceremony to China in September 1945 Source: China / Baidu.org In the war of aggression against China from 1931 to 1945, the Japanese invaders committed the most heinous and brutal massacres of the Chinese people in human history, the insane plunder of China's material property and the rare destruction of its cultural heritage. "The damage and destruction inflicted on China by Japan's war of aggression is multifaceted," Dr. Bian Shuyue of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told Xinhua reporters in Beijing on May 5. "Simply put, it can be seen in two aspects: human loss and property loss, and the resulting stagnation of social progress. He said. More than 250 kinds of slaughtering methods Dr Bian said. Dr. Bian said: "The Japanese army not only inflicted enormous human suffering on the Chinese soldiers who stood up against it on the battlefield, but also sacrificed countless innocent civilians. From the Heilongjiang River in the north to Hainan Island in the south, from Haibin in the east to Chongqing in the west, wherever the Japanese horseshoe went, the people suffered horribly, and wherever the slaughter knife went, mountains of corpses were built up. In the eight years from 1937 to 1945, the Japanese army killed tens of thousands of civilians in China, and the number of massacres alone was no less than 4,000, and the number of Chinese killed reached tens of millions. "The Japanese rampage in China was geographically very extensive, covering almost two-thirds of the country. The duration was also extremely long, spanning almost the entire 14-year period from the start of Japan's war of aggression against China to its destruction," Dr. Bian said. In its rampage of slaughtering the Chinese people, the Japanese military resorted to every conceivable form of brutality. Dr. Bian's research shows that the Japanese military used more than 250 different methods of slaughter, the majority of which are unimaginable to human reason. "What is outrageous is that the majority of these methods were also used against women and children. Incalculable destruction of material property "During the war, Japanese troops everywhere plundered public and private property like madmen, destroyed cultural heritage, mined and cut down mineral and forest resources, issued counterfeit currency, burnt down and blew up military and civilian facilities, and the material splendour of the Chinese nation was almost entirely taken away by the Japanese invaders. Almost all of the material splendor of the Chinese nation has been taken away by the Japanese invaders, Dr. Bian pointed out. Dr. Bian, who has been studying the issue of losses during the anti-war era for the past few years, believes that except for the Tibet and Xinjiang provincial class administrative regions that were not directly affected by the war at that time, the rest of the provinces either fell in whole or in part, or were partially turned into battlefields, and many cities, townships and villages were exposed to blind bombing by the Japanese. Dr. Bian said that recent studies have shown that during the whole war period, China suffered direct property losses of $100 billion and indirect losses of $500 billion. "Of course, due to the constraints of the state of the war, the survey of anti-war damage is extremely incomplete both in terms of time and space coverage," Bian said. Dr. Bian stressed that it is necessary for academic circles to study in depth the great wounds caused by Japan's war of aggression, which became a serious obstacle to China's modernization process. Japan's war of aggression delayed the modernization of Chinese society by half a century Japan's war of aggression brought a great disaster to Chinese society. It severely destroyed national security, sovereign independence and territorial integrity, inflicted huge losses on China's material and cultural assets, and severely stalled the development and progress of Chinese society. Dr. Bian said that China was the country that suffered the worst during the world's anti-fascist war, and it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that no other country has made such great sacrifices for this war as China. He also pointed out that after the war, the Chinese government abandoned the claim for compensation for war damage because of the changing international situation and the desire for friendship between the peoples of China and Japan. "However, the fact that China has abandoned the claim for compensation does not mean that it has forgotten the calamities and losses suffered by our people. However, China's renunciation of the claim for compensation does not mean that it has forgotten the calamities and losses suffered by our people, and the Chinese people will never forget the war crimes and inhumane acts committed by the Japanese military in China. （北京7月５日発新華社） |