Chinese Communist Party Ramps Up Propaganda that It Played A Prominent Role in Defeating Imperial Japan

The Wall Street Journal has an article on how the CCP is brainwashing their citizens to believe Communist guerrillas were responsible for defeating Imperial Japan in World War II:

Within China, the party is projecting its war narratives on television and cinema screens. A 10-part documentary, “Victory,” recounted the Communist Party’s “mainstay role” in fighting Japan. One new historical drama depicted how a band of Communist guerrillas in northeastern China, after being routed by Japanese forces, regrouped and fought back.

Promoting the Communists’ “mainstay” role in the resistance will help people understand the party’s “greatness, glory, and correctness,” and “unite the masses more closely around the party center with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core,” Zhu Jiamu, a senior historian at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in a recent essay.

Wall Street Journal

You can read more at the link, but the then ruling Chinese Nationalists are the ones that fought Japan throughout the war while the Communists largely hid out in the countryside. The attrition of Chinese Nationalist troops during the war is part of the reason the CCP was able to win the Chinese Civil War following World War II.

If Xi cared about history he would be thanking Nationalists troops, the U.S., and its Pacific allies for defeating Imperial Japan, but we know that will never happen. Maintaining a fictional narrative is more important. As George Orwell once said, he who controls the present controls the past.