Plan of Investigation:
i. Subject of this investigation: Why was Nehru’s Forward Policy introduced?
ii. Methods:
1. Research from primary sources mostly of memoranda and archives from both India and China in order to ascertain contemporary views.
2. Two books will be relied on primarily for their comprehensive and recommended nature: India’s China War by Neville Maxwell investigating the causes, practice and effects of the Sino-India war and The Research of Nehru’s Foreign Affairs by Chinese historian Zhongxiang Zhang, who has devoted himself into researching Sino-Indian relationship. Several other books regarding Sino-Indian diplomatic relations were also used.
3. Supplementary research will come from scholarly journals, news papers and book reviews to obtain a broader perspective.
Word Count: 109
Summary of Evidence:
In 1913, representatives of Great Britain (acting for India), China and Tibet held a conference in Simla discussing their respective borders). While each representative signed the agreement in 1914, Beijing later repudiated the agreement. The Foreign Secretary of the Indian Government, Sir Henry McMahon, who proposed the conference, decided to bypass China and negotiated directly with Tibet to settle the border bilaterally thus lending his name to the border itself. Although India publicly claimed this border in 1954, it was not recognized as legitimate by the People’s Republic of China. As a result, some areas between the McMahon and Chinese-claimed lines, notably the Aksai Chin in the western sector of the boundary, were in dispute. (see appendix I) In the eastern sector of the boundaries there were further Indian territorial claims they placed under the aegis the North Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA) within which today lies the Arunachal Pradesh region. The ensuing border dispute focussed primarily on “which nation Aksai Chin should belong to”.
Failure of Negotiations:
In 1960, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai met Nehru, his Indian counterpart in New Delhi and proposed that India drop its claim to Aksai Chin in return for China withdrawing its claims from NEFA. However, Nehru accepted neither the withdrawal of Indian troops from their claimed regions nor the maintenance of the status quo which, as Zhou suggested, could be achieved by both sides suspending patrols along the borders. Thus the conference failed.
The Forward Policy and how it led to its debacle:
Nehru’s Forward Policy was introduced at a meeting he chaired on November 2, 1961 with the main aim of establishing as many posts as possible along India’s claimed lines, particularly in Aksai Chin. Such an aggressive policy was strongly objected to by the military for strategic reasons. In March 1961, Army H.Q. informed the government about the limitations of air transport which had made it impossible to send out troops. Moreover, in April they cast doubt on the military strength in the disputed area.In June, the General Staff argued that several of the Army’s recently established posts should be evacuated unless the Air Force could treble the quantity of supplies. In addition to the military’s objections, a great numbers of warnings from Peking after the plan was put into effect were made, notably in April 21 1962 when the Indian ambassador to Peking was warned to inform his country “to stop India from patrolling troops immediately.” The following month Peking again strongly restated its grave concern about the situation in Aksai Chin and warned India again to abandon the Forward Policy.In August, the reaction from Peking became even more threatening militarily. However, this had little effect on Nehru who continued to ignore all opposition, both Chinese and domestic, and continued the Forward Policy of patrolling troops and creating further posts in Aksai Chin.
The importance of this investigation is that it was this policy that provided the stated reason for China to decide to launch invasion. In fact, the Forward Policy not only contributed as a chief reason for China to trigger the invasion, but a main factor for India’s defeat as well by putting the Indian army into a great military challenge to a far stronger power. It is clear that the Indian army was unprepared with its army lacking 60,000 rifles, 700 anti-tank guns, 200 two-inch mortars and its supply of artillery ammunition kept critically low. Furthermore, two regiments of tanks could not be operated and when the Forward Policy began to be implemented, the troops contained only two militias of Indian soldiers with winter clothing inadequate.
Word Count: 596
Evaluation of Sources:
Neville Maxwell ，India's China War，(Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1971)
This book by a British journalist was the first detailed account of events surrounding the disputes. The purpose, as he himself states in the preface, was to narrate and clarify an historical incident which he believed has continued to be widely misunderstood. page number? Throughout it is obvious his interpretation of what is "misunderstood" was the general view that China was to blame. What makes this book especially valuable is that, unlike others examining the crisis, from 1959 he was actually present, reporting from the area and in a position to watch and personally investigate the events first-hand;footnote a crucial consideration for one providing in-depth reasons for introducing this policy. Nevertheless, he could not enjoy access to documents held China and so provides an unavoidable one-sided account. He too was not trained as an historian and this feature left him open to accusations of “anti-India” bias. who accuses him?
《尼赫鲁外交研究》，张忠祥著。 中国社会科学院出版社 (Zhongxiang Zhang, The Research of Nehru’s Foreign Affair,(Zhong Guo She Hui Ke Xue Yuan Chu Ban She, 2002 )
Written by Chinese scholar Dr.Zhong Xiang Zhang to analyze Nehru's foreign affairs, this work is the first book solely dedicated to the study on Nehru’s diplomatic strategy. He is particularly well-suited for this task as an expert on Asian foreign policy (majoring in International Relations and Modern World History) and who had earlier written three critiques related to Nehru’s policy in respected scholarly journals in China. what are they? Recently published with access to documents both Chinese and Indian (his fluency in English was vitally important as most of the sources used are in English) kept hidden for the past fifty years. However, he himself never visited India which questions the breadth of his research. To make it worse, China does not allow scholars to publish books of revisionist ideas strongly oppose to the Chinese Communist Party’s standpoint, and in this book one can find some words referring to Marxist disposition (something critical of capitalism, a typical nature of Chinese history books).example? Concluding Nehru’s diplomatic strategy on relationship with China, he wrote “Nehru represented the interests of the Indian capitalists…” without providing any evidence.
Word Count: 395
Analysis:
Miscalculation by Nehru and his opposition:
Stephen Cohen argues the policy resulted from miscalculation by Nehru’s administration. Nehru’s perception of India as a unique country in its depth of pacific instincts made him believe India’s reputation abroad would, if not actively support, at least turn a blind eye to patrols into Aksai Chin. Nehru further perceived that a Sino-Indian conflict could conceivably lead to a world war which would be in the interests of all to prevent which the media at the time denounced as fantasy. He therefore deluded himself into believing that, as Neville argues, “whatever India herself did along the borders, China would not attack.”
Ironically, his political opponents’ overestimation of Indian nationalism further contributed to Nehru’s Forward Policy, arguing the conflict could be turned to good effect and the threat “can and must be used to achieve national cohesion and spur national endeavour.”Nehru was largely affected by their voices as he played the idea of India becoming “a nation of armies”. At the same time, the opposition underestimated China’s military strength. The media on the other hand, proved to be more realistic: “Most journalists were writing that the Indians were in superior strength and better equipped than the Chinese, and suggesting that the latter were garrison troops of poor fighting quality.” Though the real situation was not entirely unreported, India tended to accept optimistic reports of their military strength in comparison to the Chinese. It is not hard therefore to conclude that in Nehru’s mind, the war was not likely to begin if the Forward Policy was implemented and, even it did, India would not be defeated.
Foreign Policy and Nehru’s Political Struggle:
Zhongxiang Zhang contended that support from the Great Powers, especially the United States and Soviet Union, reinforced Nehru’s confidence. From the establishment of India to mid-1962, the United States provided India with 4 billion dollars of aid. Such a huge sum indicates that the U.S deliberately tightened its relationship with India to contain the perceived aggression of China. In the context of the Cold War this is a unique incident as the Soviet Union too provided support; on September 91959 the U.S.S.R publicly claimed to stand with India against China in the Sino-India border issues. The Russians’ attitudes changed in July 1962 as they began urging negotiation rather than war. At the same time President Kennedy expressed himself disappointed after his conversation with Nehru in November 1961. He nevertheless ordered air carriers to the Bay of Bengal in order to aid Indian army. Such mixed signals did little to dent Nehru’s confidence about India’s position.
Pressure exerted on Nehru:
Zhongxiang Zhang argued that facing critics from the public and the parliament, Nehru was pushed into going hard on China in order to maintain his political position.Indeed, the atmosphere in parliament, as Maxwell wrote, “was conductive to jingoism”Opposition members’ pre-war insistence was so strong that even Nehru’s cousin’s doubts on the equipment for Indian defence army was criticized as a serious indiscretion. The media too began coming onside as it began expressing general resentment of Chinese occupation of Indian territory This was further shown after a note India sent to China on July 26, 1962 revived the “perennial misgivings” that Nehru would accede to a settlement by appeasement. The Hindustan Times bitterly commented that the Government of India “for how long we have to endure the shame in order to let them Chinese know that we the Indian people are fighting for our dignity?”Answering such attacks, Nehru reaffirmed his position on August 13 making a statement which, as Maxwell claims, was “unusual for him” in that India proposed conditions for negotiation, though too demanding as the Chinese argued, remained unchanged showing that Nehru’s own nature was not for igniting a war against China. It was the pressure he faced which influenced him into doing so. Therefore there is no doubt that the pressure Nehru faced inside and outside parliament contributed to the continued execution of his Forward Policy.
Word Count: 698
Conclusion:
Whilst the main instigator of the Forward Policy which was a main cause of the war with China and brought India to ruin was Nehru, he himself was not operating in a vacuum. His decisions came from an overestimation of India’s diplomatic position and underestimation of China’s decisiveness and strength leading him to assume that the Forward Policy would never cause the Chinese to attack. Oscillation in Nehru’s public statements questioned his commitment and demonstrate, however indirectly, the amount of domestic influence his political opponents inside parliament and the public and media outside had on him as well as that of his foreign allies. Therefore, the Forward Policy can be recognised as a product of the Nehru administration’s miscalculations, the overestimation of India’s diplomatic relationship with the two superpowers and the pressure exerted on Nehru by the parliament and the public combining together which together led, to paraphrase Lloyd-George to a “muddling into the war.”
Word Count: 155
Total Word Count: 1953
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
How Many were Slaughtered in Nanking
A.
The investigation justifies the number of lives claimed by the Nanjing Massacre in the 1930s. In respond to this assessment, a primary source- a letter written by John Rabe to Hitler, a Chinese documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking, and various perspectives from Chinese and Japanese historians, will be examined. Two of the sources in this investigation, a letter by John Rabe to Hitler in 1938, and a documentary novel called the Rape of Nanking composed by Iris Chang, will be accessed through origin, purpose, value, and limitation.
B.
In December 1937 the Japanese army marched into the Nanjing city beginning a reign of terror. “The troops murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in horrific ways.” It was estimated the duration of the war had culminated in the death of twenty million Chinese. The city was practically collapsed into a defenseless habitat as “the government left Nanjing defenseless declaring it to be an “open city””. This therefore ensured massacres to prevail in all areas within and around the city. Since then, controversy aroused between groups from mainly China and Japan surrounds the number of people massacred by the Japanese troops during the years of the massacre. In one case a Chinese-German-made film called 拉贝日记 (John Rabe) has revealed the fact 300,000 people were killed when its film critic Song Ziwen asserts on the state-run Xinmin website, “'We always emphasize that 300,000 people were killed.” Similarily, numbers of Chinese official documents/historians point to the fact of apporximatly 300,000 deaths. Wu Tienwei, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University, estimates a death toll of above 300,000. Sun Zhaiwei, a historian at the Jiangsu Acedemy of Social Sciences, concludes a number closing to 380,000. Contradictary, John Rabe’s diary and several Japanese historians have asserted realtively low figures compared to those submitted by the Chinese. In a letter addressing to Hitler from John Rabe in 1938 he stated, “We foreigners view the figure as having been from about 50,000 to 60,000.” Japanese historian, Hata Ikuhiko, argued a death toll of approxmaitely 38000 to 42000 whereas he regarded the Chinese estimate of 300,000 deaths as exaggerdated. Moreover, Fujiwara Akira, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, has come up with an estimation of 200,000 deaths.
C.
The first source to be evaluated according to its origin, purpose, value, and limitation is a primary source, a letter written in June 1938 by John Rabe to Hitler. The letter upholds a purpose “to persuade Hitler to intervene and stop the inhuman acts of violence committed by the Japanese.” The value of it lies in the fact it is a primary source written by an eye witness of the massacre. Moreover, its weight was shown when it was aimed at addressing to Hitler himself. The limitation of it is it failed to observe the full duration of the Nanjing Massacre since John Rabe left Nanjing in February 1938. The letter hasn’t been verified by any authority but exclusively accounted from the view of a foreigner whose observation in the area had been limited. The second source to be evaluated is an English history documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking. Its purpose is to narrate the events of the massacre from perspectives of the Japanese military, Chinese victims, and westerners. Its value is shown in its ability to blend in three various aspects to reconstruct a wider and more realistic context of history. It was also the “first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city.” The limitation is the book procured the information through various sources instead of first hand experiences. The book has been criticized for its nature of “seriously flawed” and “full of misinformation and harebrained explanations.” This’ perhaps due to the fact she lacks the experience with the subject matter.
D.
The majority of the Chinese historians share a similar perspective on the fact of approximately 300,000 people were massacred throughout the course. Such fact is that certain of them based their research on the official Chinese burial records. Many people were desperate in dodging the gun fire by diving into the water while the fire persisted. This certainly would challenge the reliability of the burial records since some bodies might have been washed away or sunken to the riverbed. This inaccuracy also applies to the circumstance when gasoline was being set fire on corpses. Some experts including those from Japan have questioned the reliability of the 300,000 figure in areas concerning of double counting, and miscounting. The fact burial records were exclusively acquired from burial grounds miles away from the seashore; this therefore eliminated the possibility of taking into account of those corpses that were washed onshore then buried on spot. There were people questioning if 300,000 people existed inside the Nanking city after the Japanese troops marched in. This query was contradicted by numbers of Chinese official documents stating the number of people inside the city at that time were approximately 500,000. Nevertheless, although those factors stated above are influential to the death toll of 300,000, there still existed an uncertainty of whether those assumptions actually took place during the massacre for most of them were theories and infer. Contrary, the estimation of 300,000 deaths was reinforced by numerous primary elements. Interviews were conducted on 1,700 survivors of the massacre and arrived at a conclusion of 340,000 deaths. There was one case when the Japanese foreign minister Hirota Koki in January 1938 ordered to forward a telegram to America informing no less than 300,000 people were killed. And that was only the first month of the massacre. This is very ponderous evidence since it was devised by Japanese at that time.
Drawing to a conclusion from the analysis carried out, there is a higher possibility the 300,000 death toll is comparatively justified than the other assumptions. As have been briefly mentioned above, relatively low figures are often based on imaginative factors and theories such as double counting, miscounting, and so on, whereas the 300,000 death toll is closely associated with researches and investigations that were carried out practically namely interviews, and most importantly the recognition of certain Japanese officials.
Japanese wartime atrocities
No combatant in the Second World War more routinely perpetrated battlefield atrocities—abuses committed against enemy soldiers—than the Japanese. And while no atrocity of World War II was of greater enormity than the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese also perpetrated war crimes against civil- ian populations in occupied countries. Collectively, these may have killed even more people than the atrocities committed by the forces of Hitler’s Germany.
Whereas German war crimes and persecutions may be attributed in some part to Nazi racial mythology, which classified Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other groups as racially inferior and even sub- human, Japanese abuses may in significant part be ascribed to Bushido, the traditional warrior code of the Samurai, which defined surrender, not death, in battle as the greatest of disgraces. Bushido gave victors absolute power over those captured or conquered, who, having suffered the ultimate disgrace in surrendering rather than fighting to the death, were legitimately liable to whatever mistreatment the victor chose to mete out.
Although both the German and the Japanese officers and troops accused of war crimes were tried by Allied tribunals after the war, the Japanese atrocities are not nearly as well documented as those perpetrated by the Germans, and the numbers involved are widely disputed, some authorities claiming that Chinese civilian casualties during 1937–45 (and including those incurred during the Sino-Japanese War) numbered some 30 million killed. Many civilians died of neglect, starvation, and disease; many, however, were murdered outright or subjected to rape, torture, medical experimentation, and experimentation related to biological warfare. While German atrocities were committed against civilians on a genocidal scale comparable to that of the Japanese atrocities, German military commanders typically attempted to treat military prisoners of war (POW)
with a degree of honour, except in the case of Soviet POWs. In contrast, Japanese commanders, observing Bushido, deliberately abused, neglected, enslaved, and tortured prisoners of war, for example, the Bataan Death March. Less well known than the infamous Japanese POW camps were the prison ships on which the Japanese transported thousands of Allied prisoners. Conditions onboard were appalling, as prisoners were crammed into the cargo holds of decrepit and marginally seaworthy freighters and supplied with little food and water and no sanitary facilities. Many died of this treatment alone. As usual, guards were, in the main, sadistic and abusive. Because the prison ships were unmarked and appeared to Allied submarines and other warships and aircraft as nothing more or less than enemy freighters, they were frequently attacked and sunk, with the loss of most or all aboard.
The most infamous instances of Japanese atrocities include:
1. The Rape of Nanking, in which 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed, began in December 1937. Modes of murder included torture, immolation, burial alive, and beheading in addition to simple shooting. Among those killed in actual combat during the Japanese invasion of northern China, some were victims of biological warfare agents.
2. At Tol Plantation, in Rabaul (on New Britain in the Solomon Islands chain), Japanese troops shot or bayoneted more than 100 Australian troops during February 1942 after they surrendered.
3. On Ballalae Island in the Solomons, between 1942 and the end of the war, 516 British POWs perished under forced labour. They had been transported from the Fall of Singapore to Ballalae to build an airstrip. This figure represents a 100 percent casualty rate.
4. In China’s Kinso and Chekiang Provinces, Japa- nese troops exacted terrible reprisals against Chinese civilians after the capture (and summary execution) of three U.S. airmen who had crash landed after the successful Doolittle Tokyo Raid. During their hunt for other Doolittle raiders, Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese and razed entire villages.
5. On Ambon Island in the Dutch East Indies, Japanese troops beheaded more than 200 Australian and Dutch POWs during February 1943.
6. In January 1943, following the valiant defence of Wake Island by U.S. Marines and civilian contractors, the finally victorious Japanese machine gunned 98 of the American contractors, who had been building the island’s military facilities.
7. During June 1945, at Kalagon, Burma (modern Myanmar), Japanese troops on the hunt for British-led Burmese guerrillas surrounded the village and bayoneted or shot to death more than 600 villagers.
8. At Sandakan, North Borneo, during this same month, some 2,000 British and Austra- lian POWs died. Most had been starved or marched to death, others succumbed to disease, and many were simply murdered. Here also, some 4,000 Javanese civilians died under Japanese enslavement as labourers.
9. In July, at Loa Kulu, Borneo, Japanese soldiers brutally murdered 140 men, then seized their wives and children, many of whom were thrown to their deaths down a deep mine shaft.
10. In this same month, at Cheribon, Java, Japanese naval personnel herded 90 civilian prison- ers onto the deck of a submarine, sailed, then submerged, leaving the men, women, and children to drown or to be attacked by sharks. A single badly injured survivor of a shark attack lived just long enough to report what had happened.
11. Yet another war crime was the rape of thousands of so-called comfort women, women forced into sexual slavery to serve the sexual needs of Japanese troops at designated military “comfort stations.” Most of these women were Korean, but they were transported to outposts on many fronts. Japanese warrior tradition held that sex before battle had talismanic or magical properties that could protect against injury or death.
Bibliography
Further reading: Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin, 1998; Daws, Gavin. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: Perennial, 1996; Hicks, George L. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: Norton, 1997; Pearson, Judith. Belly of the Beast: A POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival Aboard the Infamous WWII Japanese Hellship, the Oryoku Maru. New York: New American Library, 2001; Tanaka, Yuki, and Toshiyuki Tanaka. Hid- den Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Denver: Westview Press, 1998.
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
Plan of Investigation
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place July 7th, 1937. Japanese and Chinese scholars hold diametrically opposing views of what actually occurred throughout the course of the incident; the one fact most agree on is that it became the cassus belli of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. From the Mukden Incident of 1931, tensions between Japan and China escalated and this latest Incident served as “the trigger for the Sino-Japanese War.” Analysis of contemporary Japanese, Chinese and Western historians’ books, study of the memoirs and statements made by actual combatants and participants on both sides, and a personal interview with a very knowledgeable Chinese scholar is hoped to disclose Marco Polo Bridge Incident’s course of the event, focusing on its causes, the mysteries around the “first shot” and the so called “lost soldier”, and the subsequent events following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
155 Words
Summary of Evidence
To determine the extent to which the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a deliberate act of Japanese aggression or an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, one must understand both the preceding events and the course of the events itself.
Preceding Events:
China in the 1930s was tumultuous due to the Civil War between Nationalists and Communists. During the Central Plains War, Japan fabricated the Mukden Incident and set up Manchukuo in Manchuria. Between February and May of 1933, the Kwantung Army began its offensive in Rehe Province and signing the Tanggu Truce on May 31st, recognising Rehe Province as part of Manchukuo. In June of 1935, the He-Umezu Agreement was signed, forcing the Nationalist government to leave Hebei Province, allowing Japanese troops to control areas around Beiping, (situated in Hebei Province). In June that same year, 6000 additional soldiers were stationed in the Hebei area adding to a total of 8400 soldiers.
The Course of Marco Polo Bridge Incident
From May 1937, Japanese troops in Fengtai conducted daily and nightly military exercises at a wasteland 1 kilometre north of Wanping Town. Foreign powers were allowed to hold military manoeuvres without informing the authorities provided they used blank ammunition. However, on July 7th Chinese troops reported to their brigade commander that Japanese troops were armed with live ammunition and their manoeuvres were different from usual; Japanese troops from the 7th and 8th Companies had stopped manoeuvres around 10:30 PM. At 10:40, Private 2nd Class Shimura was reported to be missing. A Japanese agent telephoned Jicha authorities to claim that while the 1st company was manoeuvring, shots were fired at them from the Chinese garrison in Wanping creating chaos, and they needed to enter Wanping Town to search for this lost soldier. If prevented, Japanese armed troops would enter. Chinese troops subsequently reported Japanese troops approaching Wanping Town but the Chinese officers in Wanping allowed Japanese commanders to enter the town to search unmolested. Either during or immediately after negotiations, Japanese troops began to shoot at Chinese troops situated at Marco Polo Bridge.
Negotiations resumed after fighting came to a halt at 9 AM on the 8th, but broke down shortly afterwards. A stalemate continued until Japanese infantry reinforcement arrived around 3:00 PM and captured the bridge. Negotiations offered by the Japanese with the demand that Chinese troops retreat from the Left Shore were rejected. . Fighting ensued, and the Chinese re-captured the bridge at 9AM on the 9th.
By the 10th, Japanese troops severed all routes connecting Wanping to Beiping and Japanese reinforcements, including heavy artillery, planes, and tanks, were transported to the area. On that day, the Japanese chief of staff listed 4 requirements for Chinese troops to prevent further fighting:
Apologise to the Japanese Armies and punish those responsible.
Take action against those who initiated the incident.
Chinese troops around Marco Polo Bridge should be removed.
Ban all Communist and anti-Japanese Organizations.
On July 11th, General Zhang signed the agreement with Colonel Matsui. That same day, the Konoe Cabinet sent three divisions to Northern China. The Nationalist government still attempted to negotiate through 3rd parties. Chiang made a speech on the 17th providing 4 solutions to the problem and decided not to declare war. On the 19th, General Zhang agreed to a similar agreement. After taking over Marco Polo Bridge after a fierce battle erupted on the 21st, Japan launched an attack on Beijing, capturing it on July 27th. Chiang realized that war was unavoidable and resistance officially began. Within a month the Chinese General Headquarters declared a general mobilization.
596 Words
Evaluation of Sources:
Interview on December 25th, 2007 with Luo Cunkang, Manager of Research Department at Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression,
Luo Cunkang is one of the spokesman for the only official comprehensive memorial for the “Resistance against Japanese Aggression” in China” , and his role for the interview, as I was referred to him by other museum directors, is to promote the core ethos of the Hall and to provide a general Chinese scholar’s standpoint on this incident, a topic he specializes. His exhaustive knowledge of the incident is due both to his studies and to his numerous encounters with soldiers or relatives of soldiers present at the incident and with other Chinese scholars. He had numerous meetings with Japanese scholars and was very respectful towards Japanese views. He spoke about the incident itself and also discussed its significance in the context of 20th Century Asia. It must be said that he, being a manager in the museum, is a representative for the memorial so it could be suggested he is limited in expressing his own opinions, and doubts regarding the event, and has to be careful with usage of words since it needs to follow the purpose of the museum.
Sankichi Yasui, Marco Polo Bridge Incident (Hong Kong, Kehua Publisher, 1999)
Professor Yasui Sankichi of Kobe University wrote this book for a Japanese audience to present the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as objectively and factually as possible. He was the head of the Japanese China Modern History Research Centre. Published in Hong Kong, the book was translated and directly published without deletion of content. Some errors present in the Japanese edition, published in 1993, were amended for this translation edition, published in 1999, due to newly available information and research. It is dedicated to describing the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and his opinions are based on the numerous quotes from Japanese soldiers and officers present at the Incident , not found in most Chinese books. Thus many valuable insights describing minutia of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident are offered, leading the author to state how “some of my perspectives differ from orthodox Chinese perspectives that may make Chinese readers feel uneasy.” Nevertheless it has been criticized stating that whilst the Sino-Japanese War was a war resulting from Japanese invasion, the cause of the Incident itself was an accident.
393 Words
Analysis:
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident has been regarded as the catalyst for the 8 year Sino-Japanese War and can possibly even be considered the opening of World War II.
Furthermore it was significant in uniting the Chinese people because it was the start of China’s resistance. Chiang Kai-Shek attempted to preserve peace but ultimately recognized the inevitability of war. This incident instigated Chinese citizens to fight against the Japanese invasion.
Although it occurred half a century ago, scholars around the world still have not agreed upon who initiated the incident. Some scholars like Professor Nakumura Akita, Historian Masanori Ito , and Higashinakano Shudo blame Communists for purposely instigating the incident to create chaos between the Nationalists and the Japanese. On the other hand, Orthodox historians like Surugadai University professor Inoue Hisashi, Taiwanese scholar Yunhan Li , and Chinese scholar Sibai Sun claim Japan initiated the incident as a pretext for a full-scale invasion. They state that the Japanese army already fabricated a series of events to reach the surroundings of Beiping, and the Incident was merely a continuation of Japan’s expansion and so the incident of the “lost soldier” was fictitious. Other scholars and historians like Yasui Sankichi and Hattori Takushiro say the initial cause of the incident was completely accidental.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” have been the primary sources of controversy. The Chinese claimed that the Japanese fired the first shot when both sides were negotiating after Colonel Matsui demanded to enter Wanping. Japanese troops claimed that the Chinese fired the first shot around 10:40 when they were manoeuvring west of Marco Polo Bridge. The significance of the “first shot” is that it resulted in a soldier getting lost. The key instigator of the incident rests in the “lost soldier.”
The matter of the lost soldier (2nd Class Private Shimura) is a different story. The Chinese, by all accounts, stated that the Japanese demanded to enter Wanping town to find the lost soldier.
Most Chinese scholars and some Japanese scholars believe that this soldier was discovered to be “lost” at around 10:40 and was reported to the Captain. It can be concluded that Shimura was discovered long before Japanese officials informed Jicha authorities to discuss the issue of the lost soldier. Some Japanese writers question whether Colonel Matsui used the lost soldier as a reason to enter Wanping Town. Scholars like Professor Hata and Professor Nakamura Akira stated that General Jin’s allegation that Colonel Matsui demanded to enter the town due to the lost soldier is false. However, despite the fact that soldiers’ memoirs omitted this event, this incident was announced in 1938’s official symposium, and telegrams sent between Chinese officials show that his disappearance was indeed a reason for Japanese officials to enter the town.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” were occasional incidents in themselves and they were not orchestrated, but Company Commander Shimizu Setsuro’s demand of Chinese troops to retreat from Marco Polo Bridge or otherwise be attacked was a very provocative move that lead to conflict. Author Iris Chang stated this move was provoking a full-scale war with China. He, along with Japanese troops, exploited these accidents and Konoe cabinet’s decision to send another 3 divisions within days also demonstrates Japan’s ambitions to expand since it also follows, as argued by as Dexin Cai. However, scholars like Shougang Zhang and Shengze Zhang argue that both governments attempted to avoid war to some levels but due their national policies, they had no choice to fight or else be considered a weakling so it ultimately resulted in an all-out war.
597 Words
Conclusion
The first shot starting the Marco Polo Bridge Incident continues to be debated amongst scholars. To this day the war is a major point of contention between China and Japan and remains a major roadblock for Sino-Japanese relations. Wading through the nationalism and ideology that pervades such discussion both sides of the sea of Japan is a minefield and, based on past Japanese actions in Manchuria and the available evidence, it appears that the Japanese troops purposely used the excuse of the lost soldier to attack and occupy Wanping. It can be concluded the Konoe Cabinet, through the deployment of more troops in the days after the Incident, used the opportunity to expand their Manchukuo territories and exploited the originally small event to achieve their aims. The Chinese government, after impassively responding to Japanese interests for the past 8 years, decided finally to defend rather than submit. Both resulted in this minor incident quickly escalating into full-scale war. It can be assumed that even if the Incident did not take place, another minor event would have instigated the war. Tensions were stored already due to series of similar incidents and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident became the trigger.
198 Words
List of Sources
Article
Dong, Linyi, “Why is it that the LuGou Bridge Incident became the beginning of the wars all over the country? Shandong Normal University Newspaper, 4th Edition, 1987.
“From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor, Who was responsible?” ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2007.
Books
Akira, Nakamura. The road to the Greater East Asian War. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1990.
Benson, John, and Takao Matsumura. Japan 1865-1945: From isolation to occupation. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Brower, Daniel R. The World in the 20th Century-The Age of Global War and Revolution. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1992.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
CPC Central Committee Party School Communist Party Historical Archives Center, The LuGou Bridge Incident and Beijing and Tianjing Anti-Japanese War. Beijing: CPC Central Committee Party School Research, Office 1986.
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the Worlds. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Harries, Meirion, and Susan Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House, 1991.
Hattori, Takushiro. The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (1). Yuxiang Zhang, Trans, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1984.
Hunter, Alan. Peace Studies in the Chinese Century. Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006.
Li, Yunhan. Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Taiwan Dongdatushu Company, 1987.
Liu, Dejun. Research works about Anti-Japanese war, Jinan: Jilu Book Publisher. 2005.
Liu, Yifei. The records of Incident of LuGou Bridge blooded War ---7.7 Incident. Beijing: Tuan Jie Publishers, 1994
McClain, James L. A Modern History, Japan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
New History Textbook 2005 version. Fushosha, 49
Qu, Jiayuan, and Zhaoqin Bai, History about LuGou Bridge Incident, Beijing: Beijing Publishers, 1997.
Rhoads, Murphey, A History of Asia. Lin Huang, trans, Beijing, Hainian Publisher, 2005.
Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Group, 1999.
Sankichi, Yasui. Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Guifang Shi and Xutian Wang, trans. Hong Kong: Kehua Chuban Corporation, 1999.
Shudo, Higashinakano. The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Sekai Shuppan, Inc, 2005.
Takushiro, Hattori. Great East Asia War History (1). Shangwu Yinshua Guan.
Wu, Yuexing, Zhibo Lin, Hua Lin, and Youyu Liu. Stories of LuGou Bridge Incident. Beijing: Beijing People’s University Publisher, 1987.
Yang, Qing, and Yang Wang. Articles about the Anti-Japanese War during recent 10 years. Beijing: Zhong Gong Dang Shi Chu, 2005.
Zhang, Chunxiang. The Incident of LuGou Bridge and eight-year Anti-Japanese War, Beijing: Beijing Chu Ban She, 1990.
CD-Rom
Encarta 2005 Reference Library. CD-ROM. Microsoft, 2004
Interview
Luo, Cunkang, personal interview, December 25th, 2007.
Magazine
Tucker-Jones, Anthony. “Clash of the Titans.” Military Illustrated Feb 2008: 9.
Pamphlet
Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression Pamphlet, English Edition.
Videos
The records of Anti-Japanese War, Dir Xiaochun You, VCD, Tianjin Taida Audio&Video Distribution Co, 25 July 2007.
Anti-Japanese War, Dir. Ermao Huang, VCD, Guangdong Youlin Audio& Video Distribution Co, 2002.
Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series, Dir. Frank Capra, DVD, Good Times Video, 1943.
Website
“International Sino-Japanese Conference”, 12 February 2008, http://chinajapan.org/articles/10.2/10.2news2-7.pdf
People’s Republic of China Japanese History Editorial Board, 15 Feb, 2008. http://www.chinarshgb.cn/htm/xxjg.html
Qi, Xiaojing, “Japanese Historian stated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is an inevitable outcome of Japanese’s policy of expansionism and invasion”, October 2007, February 10th, 2008, http://2006.chinataiwan.org/web/webportal/W5272501/Uqxjing/A514011.html,
(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kyokasho/net21/e_yukou_seimei20001205.htm#++++) 8 February, 2008.
The investigation justifies the number of lives claimed by the Nanjing Massacre in the 1930s. In respond to this assessment, a primary source- a letter written by John Rabe to Hitler, a Chinese documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking, and various perspectives from Chinese and Japanese historians, will be examined. Two of the sources in this investigation, a letter by John Rabe to Hitler in 1938, and a documentary novel called the Rape of Nanking composed by Iris Chang, will be accessed through origin, purpose, value, and limitation.
B.
In December 1937 the Japanese army marched into the Nanjing city beginning a reign of terror. “The troops murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in horrific ways.” It was estimated the duration of the war had culminated in the death of twenty million Chinese. The city was practically collapsed into a defenseless habitat as “the government left Nanjing defenseless declaring it to be an “open city””. This therefore ensured massacres to prevail in all areas within and around the city. Since then, controversy aroused between groups from mainly China and Japan surrounds the number of people massacred by the Japanese troops during the years of the massacre. In one case a Chinese-German-made film called 拉贝日记 (John Rabe) has revealed the fact 300,000 people were killed when its film critic Song Ziwen asserts on the state-run Xinmin website, “'We always emphasize that 300,000 people were killed.” Similarily, numbers of Chinese official documents/historians point to the fact of apporximatly 300,000 deaths. Wu Tienwei, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University, estimates a death toll of above 300,000. Sun Zhaiwei, a historian at the Jiangsu Acedemy of Social Sciences, concludes a number closing to 380,000. Contradictary, John Rabe’s diary and several Japanese historians have asserted realtively low figures compared to those submitted by the Chinese. In a letter addressing to Hitler from John Rabe in 1938 he stated, “We foreigners view the figure as having been from about 50,000 to 60,000.” Japanese historian, Hata Ikuhiko, argued a death toll of approxmaitely 38000 to 42000 whereas he regarded the Chinese estimate of 300,000 deaths as exaggerdated. Moreover, Fujiwara Akira, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, has come up with an estimation of 200,000 deaths.
C.
The first source to be evaluated according to its origin, purpose, value, and limitation is a primary source, a letter written in June 1938 by John Rabe to Hitler. The letter upholds a purpose “to persuade Hitler to intervene and stop the inhuman acts of violence committed by the Japanese.” The value of it lies in the fact it is a primary source written by an eye witness of the massacre. Moreover, its weight was shown when it was aimed at addressing to Hitler himself. The limitation of it is it failed to observe the full duration of the Nanjing Massacre since John Rabe left Nanjing in February 1938. The letter hasn’t been verified by any authority but exclusively accounted from the view of a foreigner whose observation in the area had been limited. The second source to be evaluated is an English history documentary novel called The Rape of Nanking. Its purpose is to narrate the events of the massacre from perspectives of the Japanese military, Chinese victims, and westerners. Its value is shown in its ability to blend in three various aspects to reconstruct a wider and more realistic context of history. It was also the “first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city.” The limitation is the book procured the information through various sources instead of first hand experiences. The book has been criticized for its nature of “seriously flawed” and “full of misinformation and harebrained explanations.” This’ perhaps due to the fact she lacks the experience with the subject matter.
D.
The majority of the Chinese historians share a similar perspective on the fact of approximately 300,000 people were massacred throughout the course. Such fact is that certain of them based their research on the official Chinese burial records. Many people were desperate in dodging the gun fire by diving into the water while the fire persisted. This certainly would challenge the reliability of the burial records since some bodies might have been washed away or sunken to the riverbed. This inaccuracy also applies to the circumstance when gasoline was being set fire on corpses. Some experts including those from Japan have questioned the reliability of the 300,000 figure in areas concerning of double counting, and miscounting. The fact burial records were exclusively acquired from burial grounds miles away from the seashore; this therefore eliminated the possibility of taking into account of those corpses that were washed onshore then buried on spot. There were people questioning if 300,000 people existed inside the Nanking city after the Japanese troops marched in. This query was contradicted by numbers of Chinese official documents stating the number of people inside the city at that time were approximately 500,000. Nevertheless, although those factors stated above are influential to the death toll of 300,000, there still existed an uncertainty of whether those assumptions actually took place during the massacre for most of them were theories and infer. Contrary, the estimation of 300,000 deaths was reinforced by numerous primary elements. Interviews were conducted on 1,700 survivors of the massacre and arrived at a conclusion of 340,000 deaths. There was one case when the Japanese foreign minister Hirota Koki in January 1938 ordered to forward a telegram to America informing no less than 300,000 people were killed. And that was only the first month of the massacre. This is very ponderous evidence since it was devised by Japanese at that time.
Drawing to a conclusion from the analysis carried out, there is a higher possibility the 300,000 death toll is comparatively justified than the other assumptions. As have been briefly mentioned above, relatively low figures are often based on imaginative factors and theories such as double counting, miscounting, and so on, whereas the 300,000 death toll is closely associated with researches and investigations that were carried out practically namely interviews, and most importantly the recognition of certain Japanese officials.
Japanese wartime atrocities
No combatant in the Second World War more routinely perpetrated battlefield atrocities—abuses committed against enemy soldiers—than the Japanese. And while no atrocity of World War II was of greater enormity than the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese also perpetrated war crimes against civil- ian populations in occupied countries. Collectively, these may have killed even more people than the atrocities committed by the forces of Hitler’s Germany.
Whereas German war crimes and persecutions may be attributed in some part to Nazi racial mythology, which classified Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other groups as racially inferior and even sub- human, Japanese abuses may in significant part be ascribed to Bushido, the traditional warrior code of the Samurai, which defined surrender, not death, in battle as the greatest of disgraces. Bushido gave victors absolute power over those captured or conquered, who, having suffered the ultimate disgrace in surrendering rather than fighting to the death, were legitimately liable to whatever mistreatment the victor chose to mete out.
Although both the German and the Japanese officers and troops accused of war crimes were tried by Allied tribunals after the war, the Japanese atrocities are not nearly as well documented as those perpetrated by the Germans, and the numbers involved are widely disputed, some authorities claiming that Chinese civilian casualties during 1937–45 (and including those incurred during the Sino-Japanese War) numbered some 30 million killed. Many civilians died of neglect, starvation, and disease; many, however, were murdered outright or subjected to rape, torture, medical experimentation, and experimentation related to biological warfare. While German atrocities were committed against civilians on a genocidal scale comparable to that of the Japanese atrocities, German military commanders typically attempted to treat military prisoners of war (POW)
with a degree of honour, except in the case of Soviet POWs. In contrast, Japanese commanders, observing Bushido, deliberately abused, neglected, enslaved, and tortured prisoners of war, for example, the Bataan Death March. Less well known than the infamous Japanese POW camps were the prison ships on which the Japanese transported thousands of Allied prisoners. Conditions onboard were appalling, as prisoners were crammed into the cargo holds of decrepit and marginally seaworthy freighters and supplied with little food and water and no sanitary facilities. Many died of this treatment alone. As usual, guards were, in the main, sadistic and abusive. Because the prison ships were unmarked and appeared to Allied submarines and other warships and aircraft as nothing more or less than enemy freighters, they were frequently attacked and sunk, with the loss of most or all aboard.
The most infamous instances of Japanese atrocities include:
1. The Rape of Nanking, in which 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed, began in December 1937. Modes of murder included torture, immolation, burial alive, and beheading in addition to simple shooting. Among those killed in actual combat during the Japanese invasion of northern China, some were victims of biological warfare agents.
2. At Tol Plantation, in Rabaul (on New Britain in the Solomon Islands chain), Japanese troops shot or bayoneted more than 100 Australian troops during February 1942 after they surrendered.
3. On Ballalae Island in the Solomons, between 1942 and the end of the war, 516 British POWs perished under forced labour. They had been transported from the Fall of Singapore to Ballalae to build an airstrip. This figure represents a 100 percent casualty rate.
4. In China’s Kinso and Chekiang Provinces, Japa- nese troops exacted terrible reprisals against Chinese civilians after the capture (and summary execution) of three U.S. airmen who had crash landed after the successful Doolittle Tokyo Raid. During their hunt for other Doolittle raiders, Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese and razed entire villages.
5. On Ambon Island in the Dutch East Indies, Japanese troops beheaded more than 200 Australian and Dutch POWs during February 1943.
6. In January 1943, following the valiant defence of Wake Island by U.S. Marines and civilian contractors, the finally victorious Japanese machine gunned 98 of the American contractors, who had been building the island’s military facilities.
7. During June 1945, at Kalagon, Burma (modern Myanmar), Japanese troops on the hunt for British-led Burmese guerrillas surrounded the village and bayoneted or shot to death more than 600 villagers.
8. At Sandakan, North Borneo, during this same month, some 2,000 British and Austra- lian POWs died. Most had been starved or marched to death, others succumbed to disease, and many were simply murdered. Here also, some 4,000 Javanese civilians died under Japanese enslavement as labourers.
9. In July, at Loa Kulu, Borneo, Japanese soldiers brutally murdered 140 men, then seized their wives and children, many of whom were thrown to their deaths down a deep mine shaft.
10. In this same month, at Cheribon, Java, Japanese naval personnel herded 90 civilian prison- ers onto the deck of a submarine, sailed, then submerged, leaving the men, women, and children to drown or to be attacked by sharks. A single badly injured survivor of a shark attack lived just long enough to report what had happened.
11. Yet another war crime was the rape of thousands of so-called comfort women, women forced into sexual slavery to serve the sexual needs of Japanese troops at designated military “comfort stations.” Most of these women were Korean, but they were transported to outposts on many fronts. Japanese warrior tradition held that sex before battle had talismanic or magical properties that could protect against injury or death.
Bibliography
Further reading: Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin, 1998; Daws, Gavin. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: Perennial, 1996; Hicks, George L. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: Norton, 1997; Pearson, Judith. Belly of the Beast: A POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival Aboard the Infamous WWII Japanese Hellship, the Oryoku Maru. New York: New American Library, 2001; Tanaka, Yuki, and Toshiyuki Tanaka. Hid- den Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Denver: Westview Press, 1998.
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
Plan of Investigation
To what extent did Japanese forces deliberately instigate the Marco Polo Bridge Incident?
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place July 7th, 1937. Japanese and Chinese scholars hold diametrically opposing views of what actually occurred throughout the course of the incident; the one fact most agree on is that it became the cassus belli of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. From the Mukden Incident of 1931, tensions between Japan and China escalated and this latest Incident served as “the trigger for the Sino-Japanese War.” Analysis of contemporary Japanese, Chinese and Western historians’ books, study of the memoirs and statements made by actual combatants and participants on both sides, and a personal interview with a very knowledgeable Chinese scholar is hoped to disclose Marco Polo Bridge Incident’s course of the event, focusing on its causes, the mysteries around the “first shot” and the so called “lost soldier”, and the subsequent events following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
155 Words
Summary of Evidence
To determine the extent to which the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a deliberate act of Japanese aggression or an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, one must understand both the preceding events and the course of the events itself.
Preceding Events:
China in the 1930s was tumultuous due to the Civil War between Nationalists and Communists. During the Central Plains War, Japan fabricated the Mukden Incident and set up Manchukuo in Manchuria. Between February and May of 1933, the Kwantung Army began its offensive in Rehe Province and signing the Tanggu Truce on May 31st, recognising Rehe Province as part of Manchukuo. In June of 1935, the He-Umezu Agreement was signed, forcing the Nationalist government to leave Hebei Province, allowing Japanese troops to control areas around Beiping, (situated in Hebei Province). In June that same year, 6000 additional soldiers were stationed in the Hebei area adding to a total of 8400 soldiers.
The Course of Marco Polo Bridge Incident
From May 1937, Japanese troops in Fengtai conducted daily and nightly military exercises at a wasteland 1 kilometre north of Wanping Town. Foreign powers were allowed to hold military manoeuvres without informing the authorities provided they used blank ammunition. However, on July 7th Chinese troops reported to their brigade commander that Japanese troops were armed with live ammunition and their manoeuvres were different from usual; Japanese troops from the 7th and 8th Companies had stopped manoeuvres around 10:30 PM. At 10:40, Private 2nd Class Shimura was reported to be missing. A Japanese agent telephoned Jicha authorities to claim that while the 1st company was manoeuvring, shots were fired at them from the Chinese garrison in Wanping creating chaos, and they needed to enter Wanping Town to search for this lost soldier. If prevented, Japanese armed troops would enter. Chinese troops subsequently reported Japanese troops approaching Wanping Town but the Chinese officers in Wanping allowed Japanese commanders to enter the town to search unmolested. Either during or immediately after negotiations, Japanese troops began to shoot at Chinese troops situated at Marco Polo Bridge.
Negotiations resumed after fighting came to a halt at 9 AM on the 8th, but broke down shortly afterwards. A stalemate continued until Japanese infantry reinforcement arrived around 3:00 PM and captured the bridge. Negotiations offered by the Japanese with the demand that Chinese troops retreat from the Left Shore were rejected. . Fighting ensued, and the Chinese re-captured the bridge at 9AM on the 9th.
By the 10th, Japanese troops severed all routes connecting Wanping to Beiping and Japanese reinforcements, including heavy artillery, planes, and tanks, were transported to the area. On that day, the Japanese chief of staff listed 4 requirements for Chinese troops to prevent further fighting:
Apologise to the Japanese Armies and punish those responsible.
Take action against those who initiated the incident.
Chinese troops around Marco Polo Bridge should be removed.
Ban all Communist and anti-Japanese Organizations.
On July 11th, General Zhang signed the agreement with Colonel Matsui. That same day, the Konoe Cabinet sent three divisions to Northern China. The Nationalist government still attempted to negotiate through 3rd parties. Chiang made a speech on the 17th providing 4 solutions to the problem and decided not to declare war. On the 19th, General Zhang agreed to a similar agreement. After taking over Marco Polo Bridge after a fierce battle erupted on the 21st, Japan launched an attack on Beijing, capturing it on July 27th. Chiang realized that war was unavoidable and resistance officially began. Within a month the Chinese General Headquarters declared a general mobilization.
596 Words
Evaluation of Sources:
Interview on December 25th, 2007 with Luo Cunkang, Manager of Research Department at Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression,
Luo Cunkang is one of the spokesman for the only official comprehensive memorial for the “Resistance against Japanese Aggression” in China” , and his role for the interview, as I was referred to him by other museum directors, is to promote the core ethos of the Hall and to provide a general Chinese scholar’s standpoint on this incident, a topic he specializes. His exhaustive knowledge of the incident is due both to his studies and to his numerous encounters with soldiers or relatives of soldiers present at the incident and with other Chinese scholars. He had numerous meetings with Japanese scholars and was very respectful towards Japanese views. He spoke about the incident itself and also discussed its significance in the context of 20th Century Asia. It must be said that he, being a manager in the museum, is a representative for the memorial so it could be suggested he is limited in expressing his own opinions, and doubts regarding the event, and has to be careful with usage of words since it needs to follow the purpose of the museum.
Sankichi Yasui, Marco Polo Bridge Incident (Hong Kong, Kehua Publisher, 1999)
Professor Yasui Sankichi of Kobe University wrote this book for a Japanese audience to present the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as objectively and factually as possible. He was the head of the Japanese China Modern History Research Centre. Published in Hong Kong, the book was translated and directly published without deletion of content. Some errors present in the Japanese edition, published in 1993, were amended for this translation edition, published in 1999, due to newly available information and research. It is dedicated to describing the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and his opinions are based on the numerous quotes from Japanese soldiers and officers present at the Incident , not found in most Chinese books. Thus many valuable insights describing minutia of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident are offered, leading the author to state how “some of my perspectives differ from orthodox Chinese perspectives that may make Chinese readers feel uneasy.” Nevertheless it has been criticized stating that whilst the Sino-Japanese War was a war resulting from Japanese invasion, the cause of the Incident itself was an accident.
393 Words
Analysis:
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident has been regarded as the catalyst for the 8 year Sino-Japanese War and can possibly even be considered the opening of World War II.
Furthermore it was significant in uniting the Chinese people because it was the start of China’s resistance. Chiang Kai-Shek attempted to preserve peace but ultimately recognized the inevitability of war. This incident instigated Chinese citizens to fight against the Japanese invasion.
Although it occurred half a century ago, scholars around the world still have not agreed upon who initiated the incident. Some scholars like Professor Nakumura Akita, Historian Masanori Ito , and Higashinakano Shudo blame Communists for purposely instigating the incident to create chaos between the Nationalists and the Japanese. On the other hand, Orthodox historians like Surugadai University professor Inoue Hisashi, Taiwanese scholar Yunhan Li , and Chinese scholar Sibai Sun claim Japan initiated the incident as a pretext for a full-scale invasion. They state that the Japanese army already fabricated a series of events to reach the surroundings of Beiping, and the Incident was merely a continuation of Japan’s expansion and so the incident of the “lost soldier” was fictitious. Other scholars and historians like Yasui Sankichi and Hattori Takushiro say the initial cause of the incident was completely accidental.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” have been the primary sources of controversy. The Chinese claimed that the Japanese fired the first shot when both sides were negotiating after Colonel Matsui demanded to enter Wanping. Japanese troops claimed that the Chinese fired the first shot around 10:40 when they were manoeuvring west of Marco Polo Bridge. The significance of the “first shot” is that it resulted in a soldier getting lost. The key instigator of the incident rests in the “lost soldier.”
The matter of the lost soldier (2nd Class Private Shimura) is a different story. The Chinese, by all accounts, stated that the Japanese demanded to enter Wanping town to find the lost soldier.
Most Chinese scholars and some Japanese scholars believe that this soldier was discovered to be “lost” at around 10:40 and was reported to the Captain. It can be concluded that Shimura was discovered long before Japanese officials informed Jicha authorities to discuss the issue of the lost soldier. Some Japanese writers question whether Colonel Matsui used the lost soldier as a reason to enter Wanping Town. Scholars like Professor Hata and Professor Nakamura Akira stated that General Jin’s allegation that Colonel Matsui demanded to enter the town due to the lost soldier is false. However, despite the fact that soldiers’ memoirs omitted this event, this incident was announced in 1938’s official symposium, and telegrams sent between Chinese officials show that his disappearance was indeed a reason for Japanese officials to enter the town.
The “first shot” and the “lost soldier” were occasional incidents in themselves and they were not orchestrated, but Company Commander Shimizu Setsuro’s demand of Chinese troops to retreat from Marco Polo Bridge or otherwise be attacked was a very provocative move that lead to conflict. Author Iris Chang stated this move was provoking a full-scale war with China. He, along with Japanese troops, exploited these accidents and Konoe cabinet’s decision to send another 3 divisions within days also demonstrates Japan’s ambitions to expand since it also follows, as argued by as Dexin Cai. However, scholars like Shougang Zhang and Shengze Zhang argue that both governments attempted to avoid war to some levels but due their national policies, they had no choice to fight or else be considered a weakling so it ultimately resulted in an all-out war.
597 Words
Conclusion
The first shot starting the Marco Polo Bridge Incident continues to be debated amongst scholars. To this day the war is a major point of contention between China and Japan and remains a major roadblock for Sino-Japanese relations. Wading through the nationalism and ideology that pervades such discussion both sides of the sea of Japan is a minefield and, based on past Japanese actions in Manchuria and the available evidence, it appears that the Japanese troops purposely used the excuse of the lost soldier to attack and occupy Wanping. It can be concluded the Konoe Cabinet, through the deployment of more troops in the days after the Incident, used the opportunity to expand their Manchukuo territories and exploited the originally small event to achieve their aims. The Chinese government, after impassively responding to Japanese interests for the past 8 years, decided finally to defend rather than submit. Both resulted in this minor incident quickly escalating into full-scale war. It can be assumed that even if the Incident did not take place, another minor event would have instigated the war. Tensions were stored already due to series of similar incidents and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident became the trigger.
198 Words
List of Sources
Article
Dong, Linyi, “Why is it that the LuGou Bridge Incident became the beginning of the wars all over the country? Shandong Normal University Newspaper, 4th Edition, 1987.
“From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor, Who was responsible?” ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2007.
Books
Akira, Nakamura. The road to the Greater East Asian War. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1990.
Benson, John, and Takao Matsumura. Japan 1865-1945: From isolation to occupation. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Brower, Daniel R. The World in the 20th Century-The Age of Global War and Revolution. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1992.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
CPC Central Committee Party School Communist Party Historical Archives Center, The LuGou Bridge Incident and Beijing and Tianjing Anti-Japanese War. Beijing: CPC Central Committee Party School Research, Office 1986.
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the Worlds. London: Penguin Books, 2007.
Harries, Meirion, and Susan Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House, 1991.
Hattori, Takushiro. The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (1). Yuxiang Zhang, Trans, Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1984.
Hunter, Alan. Peace Studies in the Chinese Century. Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006.
Li, Yunhan. Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Taiwan Dongdatushu Company, 1987.
Liu, Dejun. Research works about Anti-Japanese war, Jinan: Jilu Book Publisher. 2005.
Liu, Yifei. The records of Incident of LuGou Bridge blooded War ---7.7 Incident. Beijing: Tuan Jie Publishers, 1994
McClain, James L. A Modern History, Japan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
New History Textbook 2005 version. Fushosha, 49
Qu, Jiayuan, and Zhaoqin Bai, History about LuGou Bridge Incident, Beijing: Beijing Publishers, 1997.
Rhoads, Murphey, A History of Asia. Lin Huang, trans, Beijing, Hainian Publisher, 2005.
Roberts, J. M. The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Group, 1999.
Sankichi, Yasui. Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Guifang Shi and Xutian Wang, trans. Hong Kong: Kehua Chuban Corporation, 1999.
Shudo, Higashinakano. The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction: A Historian's Quest for the Truth, Sekai Shuppan, Inc, 2005.
Takushiro, Hattori. Great East Asia War History (1). Shangwu Yinshua Guan.
Wu, Yuexing, Zhibo Lin, Hua Lin, and Youyu Liu. Stories of LuGou Bridge Incident. Beijing: Beijing People’s University Publisher, 1987.
Yang, Qing, and Yang Wang. Articles about the Anti-Japanese War during recent 10 years. Beijing: Zhong Gong Dang Shi Chu, 2005.
Zhang, Chunxiang. The Incident of LuGou Bridge and eight-year Anti-Japanese War, Beijing: Beijing Chu Ban She, 1990.
CD-Rom
Encarta 2005 Reference Library. CD-ROM. Microsoft, 2004
Interview
Luo, Cunkang, personal interview, December 25th, 2007.
Magazine
Tucker-Jones, Anthony. “Clash of the Titans.” Military Illustrated Feb 2008: 9.
Pamphlet
Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression Pamphlet, English Edition.
Videos
The records of Anti-Japanese War, Dir Xiaochun You, VCD, Tianjin Taida Audio&Video Distribution Co, 25 July 2007.
Anti-Japanese War, Dir. Ermao Huang, VCD, Guangdong Youlin Audio& Video Distribution Co, 2002.
Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series, Dir. Frank Capra, DVD, Good Times Video, 1943.
Website
“International Sino-Japanese Conference”, 12 February 2008, http://chinajapan.org/articles/10.2/10.2news2-7.pdf
People’s Republic of China Japanese History Editorial Board, 15 Feb, 2008. http://www.chinarshgb.cn/htm/xxjg.html
Qi, Xiaojing, “Japanese Historian stated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is an inevitable outcome of Japanese’s policy of expansionism and invasion”, October 2007, February 10th, 2008, http://2006.chinataiwan.org/web/webportal/W5272501/Uqxjing/A514011.html,
(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kyokasho/net21/e_yukou_seimei20001205.htm#++++) 8 February, 2008.
Was The Chinese Communist Party Responsible for the Massacre and Cannibalism During the Guangxi factional wars OF 1968?
Plan of Investigation (154)This investigation assesses the role of the Chinese Communist Party in the massacre and cannibalism of Guangxi Province in 1968, during the peak of the Cultural Revolution: was the central government responsible for the death of 200,000 people?Claiming as many lives as the Nanking Massacre, the mass killing and cannibalism which took place in the rural areas of Guangxi autonomous region remains one of the biggest taboos in China. . Understanding the context to decipher the root cause is the aim of this paper. The prompt requires extensive research on what instigated the factional war and the government’s involvement throughout. I will employ the Scarlet Memorial,by Mr. Zheng Yi and a dissertation titled “State Sponsorship or State Failure? Mass Killings in Rural China, 1967-68”, by Professor Yang Su as my primary sources. Other sources include interviews with witnesses, doctors, government consultants, as well as literature by Chinese and Western historians, and organizational behaviorists.
Summary of Evidence (450)In the early 1960’s, Mao sought to refocus the public on his goal of a ‘continuous revolution.’ The violent year of “class struggles” in 1968 is the pinnacle of the perilous decade that caused 2.8 million deaths and political dissonancy resonant even forty years later.
Background to the Factional WarsAnswering Mao’s call, in 1966, Revolutionary Committees were established nation-wide to open all levels of government, from officials in the Politburo to municipalities in rural counties for the “criticism and judgment of the sharp-eyed masses” . The targets of this movement, “class enemies”, spanned from ‘anti-revolutionary’ artists to doctors, “landlords” to “capitalist roaders”, teachers to students . Mass gatherings were held where these people were openly humiliated. At this point, the public still adhered to Mao’s call for Verbal Struggle . Meanwhile, because local governments were disbanded and upper party members were in dispute , the number of factions grew exponentially in the country.
Wei Guoqing and ‘Physical Struggle’By July of 1967, the Red Guards in Guangxi generally sided with one of the two major factions , one in support of the Provincial Party secretary Wei Guoqing, and the other against. Due to his close diplomatic ties with Hanoi during the Vietnam War , Wei was able to exercise his power autocratically, focusing public discontent on the faction known as the “411 Group” that disagreed with his conservative policies. Due to growing threats, the “411 Group” stole weaponry for protection, and after misreporting to the central government on the situation and gaining permission to act, Wei Guoqing mobilized all his supporters to wipe out the “class enemies” , ridding the province of “armed bandits” . He encouraged shows of “commitment to revolution”; from July until December of 1968 over 200, 000 were tortured and murdered, without trial. 100, 000 died between July and August alone. All individuals suspected of 411 membership, their associates and their families were not spared.
CannibalismThe most extreme method of killing was cannibalism; 3000 named individuals fell victim to it in four counties alone . Perpetrators usually began with summoning a village meeting, calling forth the ‘suspect’, stating the crime and calling for justice. Then, the mass would gather around the subject, physically assault him or her, cut two diagonals across the abdomen and push out the organs. Those who were most involved in this process “had the most resolve”. Official records claim that near the close of December, news regarding the intensity of the activities in Guangxi finally reached Beijing in the form of a letter from a local cadet in Wuxuan and Premier Zhou Enlai, outraged, immediately sent commander in chief of the Guangxi Military Region to dispatch militia into the counties, putting down the unrest. The extreme violence ended at the beginning of 1969.
Evaluation of Sources (530)Source A: Scarlet Memorial By Zheng YiThe book is a primary source published in 1993 by Westview Press, a company renowned for democracy promotion. Written by Chinese journalist, writer, and exile about his investigation on the cannibalism and mass killings of the Guangxi Massacre in 1986, the book was one of the only two documents on the subject and was the only reason the event is known overseas, making it invaluable. New York Review of Books applauded Zheng ; Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas D. Kristof chided with, “ through immense courage and persistence, Zheng Yi has assembled the most painful and damning and haunting indictment of Maoist China that one can imagine.” Historian Jasper Becker in bestseller Hungry Ghosts, along with seven books, a multitude of periodicals, and the infamous Epoch Times all cite the Scarlet Memorial as a source of primary evidence. It is the book on this topic that is “best known to the Western world.”The author asserts he “intended to collect historical material on various ruthless incidents during the Cultural Revolution and to analyze the poisonous effects of ultra-leftism from a psychological perspective.” He sought to “focus on the local level …” because “the higher the bureaucrat, the tighter his mouth.” Yet, the book is saturated with emotional language and details that seem to be for shock value. This aspect limits the source, as does the fact that it was originally written in Chinese, and “edited and translated” by T.P. Sym, another democracy advocate. Furthermore, Zheng single-handedly collected the data on his journalistic trip, “smuggled it out of the country”, when he was running away as a wanted man . Authenticating his data is near impossible at this point and his possible political vendetta cannot be ignored.
Source B: “State Sponsorship or State Failure? Mass Killings in Rural China, 1967-68” by Yang Su, Ph.D.
This source comes from a professor of sociology in the University of California at Irvine (UCI) , who received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University and has worked with academia in the study of social movements, political sociology and “China’s Political Transition”. Published in 2003 by his university press as a thesis paper, Su personally researched scores of officially published county annals in Chinese and uses geography, demography, even statistics, to examine every aspect of the mass killings in Guangxi, including the question of government responsibility. This paper is crucial, as it arises from unbiased research , a writer who is not a political dissident.
Su’s purpose is not personal; his clinical language is consistent and in his conclusion, he speaks of genocide research and finding out the “how” . This scholarly perspective aids historians to use his data trustingly and to consider his neutral understanding of the event: blame cannot be fully allotted to the central government, just as the mass murders cannot be completely dismissed. Thus, the limitations to this document are in proportion to the limitations on the contentious topic itself: even when governmental archives are opened, the rural disposition of the counties with will have eroded the objective truth to the event.
Analysis (722)Mass KillingTo prove or disprove the government’s relationship with the mass killings, we must examine the evidence that is present, and due to censorship, the evidence that should be present, be it for or against the verdict. Official records show that Wei Guoqing was deposed after the fall of the Gang of Four, in 1975; though he never went on trial and his ‘misdemeanor’ was never made known and criticized widely, he was “guilty of insubordination, inciting popular violence, and bribery” . This first fact establishes governmental responsibility, be it on a provincial level. The question then is whether the central party members were directly behind the instigation, and moreover, whether they were even aware of the situation.
Becker, who followed up with further research, personally acknowledged his firm belief that “ultimately, Mao [himself] was responsible.” Though he did not claim circumstantial evidence to the above comment, Zheng, likewise, clearly implied the same with, “In this country, with its complete ban on freedom, people were unable to learn the scope and depth of the suffering, nor could they realize that the cause of the suffering was the totalitarian system, with Mao sitting on the top… thus, the common people could only focus their anger elsewhere” . Logically, this anger expressed in extremity is expressed in the factional wars, where each antagonized “class enemy” is made to be the “stagnation to the revolution” , a direct cause of their pain. This psychological approach to the issue is valid and does place guilt upon the government in general. Yet, tangible evidence suggests the opposite. There are two general memorandums, and countless references from Mao and Deng in late 1968 that call for “a return to ‘Verbal Struggle’, not violence” and “an end to factionalism, reclaiming industrial goals and advancement” . However, judging from their previous work, historians like Sheryl Wudunn and Jung Chang, would argue the validity of these papers: if the authorities gave permission to certain regions to use ‘physical struggle’, of course there would be no documentation of it.
Su was able to use the timing, location, victim and perpetrator profiles to show that the massacre in Guangxi was paradoxically both a “state sponsorship and a state failure”. This builds into the prior ideas of indirect causation, providing evidence that the establishment of government instigated revolutionary committees occurred immediately before or after the height of mass killing in many provinces. Yet Su asserts the violence was not caused by a “top-down diffusion process” , as shown by the absence of genocidal activities in urban areas, and how death tolls in rural areas were exponentially greater. Others like Su agree that though the government called for ‘rebellion’ in the mid 60’s, it was necessary considering the context of the time and the need for, ironically, political consolidation. The factions that formed to support these ideals eventually became uncontrollable; from an organizational behavior perspective, mass aggression only escalates.
CannibalismSadly, cannibalism is the reason why Zheng Yi’s book on the massacre caught public attention. Though there is no evidence whatsoever of the government’s involvement, and hence no responsibility for its beginning, the perpetuation of the brutality has been questioned. The most popular question is why a government so indignant over tragedies like the Nanking massacre , would turn and ignore another genocide which claimed just as many lives, and in such an animalistic manner? The question answers itself, or as government consultant Kang would say in Chinese idiom, “family ugliness is not to be made known.” If there was no governmental incitement and a cover-up was still in order, only one fact can be proven: the subject is simply too great of a taboo, not just for China, but for the entire civilized world. Japanese historians, like Nagae Yoshimasa, would then use these ‘sub-human’ traits to justify the war crimes during the invasion of WWII. In any case, killing may have arguably been state sponsored, but cannibalism was an expression of ‘loyalty’ that the government did not call for. Judging from how militia was sent in to Guangxi as soon as the top officials discovered the extent of the crises, there was no direct government responsibility to the cannibalism itself.
ConclusionThe central members of the Communist Party are not directly responsible for the massacre in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. Though they initiated factionalism, created the idea of ‘class enemies’, and allowed people to ‘rebel’ and ‘struggle’ in whatever ways the mass defined those terms, there was no mandate that encouraged murder, not to mention cannibalism. The time and rural location of the cases prove that not only did the higher authorities clearly not foresee the consequences, therefore, did not premeditate them. This conclusion is perhaps more decisive than it should be, considering the Communist archives are still unopened and only forty years have passed, not allowing enough objectivity to make a certain historical judgment. Yet, at this point, the evidence shows no correlation.
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2.Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts. New York: The Free P, 1996.
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22.Song, Yongyi. "The Cultural Revolution and the War Against Fascism." The Epoch Group. University of Chicago, Illinois. 24 Sept. 2002.
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24.Unger, Jonathan. The Transformation of Rural China . M. E. Sharpe, 2002. P 150.
25.Valentino, Benjamin. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004.
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30.Yang, Kelin, ed. Wen Hua Da Ge Ming: Buo Wu Guan (Museum of the Cultural Revolution). Vol. 1. Hong Kong: Tian Di Books, 2001.
31.Yang, Su, "State Sponsorship or State Failure? Mass Killings in Rural China, 1967-68" (May 1, 2003). Center for the Study of Democracy. University of California, Irvine. Paper 03-06.
32.Yue, Gang. The Mouth That Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China . Durham: Duke UP, 1999.
33. Zheng, Yi. Scarlet Memorial. Boulder, CO: Westview P, 1996.
Appendix A: Historical Chronology Of Events Concerning Guangxi Province1950-19861950Guangxi is “liberated” by Chinese Communist forces1955Wei guoqing is appointed governor and Party secretary1957 June: Anti-rightist campaign leads to widespread persecution ofintellectuals and writers throughout China1958 Guangxi is established as one of five “autonomous regions” in China1958-60The great Leap forward is launched by CCP Chairman Mao Zedong1960-63The “three bitter years” of famine and privation sweep the nation as a consequence of Mao’s irrational and grandiose Great Leap policies1962-65The Socialist Education Movement is launched in the Chinese countryside against cadre corruption and the abuse of power1965March: Large-scale U.S. bombing of North Vietnam begins near theGuangxi border1966-76The period of the Cultural Revolution1966May: first big-character poster appears at Peking University (Beida) initiating a mass campaign among students.
July: First Red Guard organizations appear in BeijingAugust: A series of massive Red Guard rallies begins in Beijing. Eleventh Plenum of the CCP Central Committee authorizes formation of the Revolutionary Committees.
1967January: The first Revolutionary Committee is established in Heilongjiang Province as left-wing radicals decide to seize Party and state powerApril 22: “Small Faction” of Red Guards is formed in Guangxi leading to a two-year period of intense factional fightingJuly: Wuhan incident brings China to the brink of civil war as PLA units in this central China city directly challenged central authority1968January: Mao denounces the factionalism and anarchism of extremeleft.
March: extreme Left regains the initiative as Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, strengthens her control of leftist elements.
April: The Left is encouraged to step up attacks on powerholders in the Party and governmentJune: Violence intensifies throughout ChinaJuly 3: CCP Central Committee, the State Council, and Central Military Commission issue “July 3 Bulletin” warning against disruption of railway communication in Guangxi and attacks on PLA organs and troops. The bulletin provokes vicious battles in the region among various factions that result in the incidents of cannibalism.
August: Provincial-level Revolutionary Committee established in Guangxi headed by Wei Guoqing1969April: Ninth party Congress selects Lin Biao as Mao’s official successor1976September: Death of Mao Zedong brings an end to the Cultural RevolutionOctober: Members of the Gang of Four, including Jiang Qing, are arrested and imprisoned1983-84Following Wei Guoqing’s fall from power in Guangxi, CCP investigations of abuses during the Cultural Revolution unearth evidence of cannibalism there.
To what extent did the Cultural Revolution in China affect the destruction and elimination of all religious institutions in Albania (1967-1970)?
A. Plan of Investigation
The aim of this investigation is to analyze the extent to which the Cultural Revolution in China affected the destruction and elimination of all religious institutions in Albania from 1967, because of the two countries' strong relationship at the time.
The methods to be used to give a relevant and precise answer to this question consist of researching primary and secondary sources (the most recommended books written from the actual victims as a result of the Cultural Revolution in Albania and search through internet for further information and analysis for the impact that the Cultural Revolution in China had in Albania), which would help me identify different aspects of this problem. Furthermore, interviews with experts and analysts that have extensive knowledge about this period in the history of Albania and the communist regime in Albania will be given particular consideration. These will include interviews with the head of the Albanian National Library in Tirana, Mr. Aurel Plasari, the head of the Albanian section of Voice of America in New York, Mr. Elez Biberaj, and with the Albanian Catholic Cleric of Shkodra, Father Zef Pllumi, who had suffered directly from the Cultural Revolution in Albania. The reasons I am going to use these sources are related to the direct connection that the Cleric from Shkodra has with the events occurred at the time, in 1967, as well as the political view he approaches in his book about the impact that China has in the Cultural Revolution in Albania. However, one of my plans to investigate this question was also to interview experts from China that can give me more information and a relevant answer, but this was not possible because of the lack of confidence from the Chinese side.
B. Summary of evidence
The Cultural Revolution in Albania can be considered one of the most critical periods in the history of this country. When Albania put an end to its servile relationship with the USSR (1958-1960) it turned to China as the only ally possible that would accept its political and ideological differences which, as it would turn out would remain the only common factor that brought them together. This alliance consisted in reciprocal aid, both financial and military, and also consisted in Albania being the only representative of Chinese ideological and political movements in Europe. From the time this friendship started the Chinese government had given to Albania millions of pounds sterling worth of financial aid to develop industry in Albania and other areas of life. However, to what extent was the Cultural Revolution in China an essential impact in the destruction campaign undertaken as part of the Cultural Revolution in Albania? Once, the Chinese said to their European allies: "you cannot stop fires by throwing water from far away". The Chinese Prime Minister had been twice to Albania and for the second time in Enver Hoxha's newspaper "Zeri I Popullit" (People's Voice) there was this byline before the Prime Minister's arrival:, "For this New Year's Eve we will have some sihariq (news) for the Albanian people". At the time there were rumours about what the leaders of these two "sister-parties" would discuss and would decide for the future of this new Marxist-Leninist theory on how to treat the masses and the people; to protect the socialist Motherland. At the time the Cultural Revolution in China had already started and it attacked mostly intellectuals and religious institutions. The events occurring in China were seen by Hoxha with great interest and in order to fulfill his "desire to subordinate all aspects of life to the Communist Party control and thus prevent the emergence of 'revisionism' and restoration of capitalism in Albania"made his ultimate speech on February 6th 1967 where he supported "the elimination of useless religious beliefs and unrevolutionary traditions", where the government would call the young generation to turn down these religious institutions so finally the government could rule in a pure revolutionary state. On February 7th 1967 students from Durres's high school of Naim Frasheri destroyed the church of Shen Vlash, one of the oldest monasteries in Albania. By May 1967, religious institutions had been forced to relinquish all 2169 churches, mosques, cloisters and shrines in Albania, many of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. Albania afterwards would declare itself "the first atheist nation in the world".
C. Evaluation of sources
The first source evaluated is primary; the speech that the Albanian communist leader, Enver Hoxha, made on February 6th 1967, where for the first time he officially launched the Cultural Revolution and denounced religious institutions as "useless beliefs for the sake of the communist nation"(X). This source is extremely important in its historical context particularly because it is Hoxha himself speaking to the party members about this new movement in Albania. This speech is recognised as one of the most important speeches that Enver Hoxha had ever made, because it turned the country into a new era, where for the first time the right to believe was banned. This speech is mentioned in many books that talk about the Cultural Revolution in Albania including At Zef Pllumi's book where he examines the course of events that occurred at the beginning. It is also mentioned in many websites and relevant articles that talk about the banishing of religion in Albania. Therefore this source is very valuable. However this source has its limitations as well, because it is Hoxha speaking to his party members, trying to be persuasive by boasting about the party's achievements and the reasons why collectivization and "socialist education" would be aided by eliminating all religious institutions. He uses young people to denote this fact and the reliability of the source and what Hoxha is saying is actually true is to be doubted. His being a dictator doubts the trustworthiness of his words.
On the other hand, the second and third volume of the book written by At Zef Pllumi "Rrno vetem per me tregue" (I live just so I can convey) is more balanced. His books are about the banishing of religion in Albania since the communists came to power and is written from a personal point of view. At Zef Pllumi has been a priest in the city of Shkodra for many years and the sources he gives us in his books are valuable because they are recounted from a person who lived himself through the days of communism and in the end suffered many years of imprisonment from the regime. His analysis about the social and political situation are important because they are told from a man who was a victim of the Cultural Revolution. This book was published and written in 1999 and this is another advantage of the source because it is not constricted from political power in Albania. Since it was published in Albania it stands from an Albanian point of view. The purpose of the author writing this book is foreshadowed from the actual title of the book "I live so I can convey". However, the limitations to these sources consist on his being biased for many claims and statements because of his strong religious beliefs and also the coverage where he mentions and analyses the impact that China had on the Albanian Cultural Revolution is not enough and is mostly a chapter in the end of the second volume. When the author talks about the Chinese Prime minister coming to Albania, he neither gives specific dates nor recounts specific quotes from Hoxha's and Zhuen Lai's conversations about this new theory that they both had to support. On the other hand when he says that "At the time there were rumours on what the leaders of these two 'sister-parties' would discuss about and would decide for the future of this new Marxist-Leninist theory on how to treat the masses and the people; to protect the socialist Motherland", he bases his ideas on rumors and not on actual facts based on research. Another limitation would be the fact that the translation of this book's extracts are not official, but are done by me. The lack of experience that I have in translation might present another limitation to this source, even though I have tried to give a precise and appropriate translation.
D. Analysis
Religion, though protected from the constitutional law of the Socialist Republic of Albania of that time, presented a threat to the regime. Therefore Hoxha found the right moment to fight this threat and the right model to follow (China) in order to fight religious institutions which were anti-propagandistic for Hoxha's regime. The similarities between the Cultural Revolution in China and those in Albania are not to be neglected.
Timing is one thing to be considered as an indicator that the Chinese Cultural Revolution influenced in Albania. The Chinese Cultural Revolution had been going on for years now in China and many religious institutions were eliminated as a result of the revolutionary attacks from the Red Guards. In 1966-67* the Chinese premier Zhuen Lai came to Albania to "discuss and would decide about this new ideological Marxist-Leninist theory to treat the masses and protect the motherland." In the same year, two months later Hoxha gave his great speech where he discussed problems that had to be eliminated, problems that impeded the country's ideological revolution. Why should our laws prevent us from destroying old traditions and useless beliefs?( Zeri I popullit, nr.32). Within one month the government organized students and youth organizations in order to make this movement seem spontaneous and that it had nothing to do with the regime's decisions but was completely natural. " Like you all are informed, our youth has undertaken the campaign against worthless religious beliefs and the people, who are clarified from the Party's lessons , close all churches and now they are ready to destroy them, so their memory would be forever gone. Others religious monuments that are of use will be exploited for people's benefits" (ex. From Rrno per me tregue, pg.273 II).
Other similarities that have to be considered are the use of "denunciation letters" for the first time in Albania. In China they were known as "DaCiBao" in which people would denounce or criticize each other for non-revolutionary behaviour. Religion was central in these letters and many times these letters were put in churches' and mosques' doors. "The next day throughout the whole country the denunciation letters" started to appear, just like in China"(ex from Rrno per me tregue, pg. 251, II).
Do away with the existing and very ridiculous wall papers and turn them into revolutionary wall notices which will help revolutionary education. Do away with these wall bulletins with their editorial boards of opportunist scribblers who uphold the dignity and authority of the director and of themselves at the same time, and let everyone write what he thinks of work and of the people in bold face letters and without fear.(Hoxha's speech 1967).
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