Commentary

Patriotism, peace and pain: The politics behind China’s World War II narrative

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A girl looking at an image of corpses in a pond at the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing on July 8.

ST PHOTO: YEW LUN TIAN

Summary

• China commemorates the 80th anniversary of its victory against Japan and fascism with events, including a military parade and museum exhibition displaying wartime atrocities to instill patriotism.
• For Beijing, peace is not only an aspiration, but also a moral high ground that it claims as it rises on the world stage. But some of China’s neighbours remain wary.
• Xi Jinping urges the youth to “be a dignified, honourable and proud Chinese”, and to “bravely shoulder the great responsibility of national rejuvenation”.

AI generated

In a dark museum hall, a seven-year-old girl stared intently at a black-and-white image of corpses strewn haphazardly in a pond, part of a slideshow depicting the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing during World War II.

The next slide showed a close-up of a dead toddler. The girl blinked and turned away.

“No, I don’t worry that my daughter will have nightmares from such gory photos,” her father Zhao Fei told The Sunday Times. “She needs to know what terrible things the Japanese did to us, so that one day, if our country needs her, she will step up.”

Asked whether he meant that if there is a war, he would want his daughter to take up arms, he replied