69 replies to this topic

[feathersea]

Nazi wasted vast amount of resouce to kill 6 million jews,somehow the Genocide reallly hold them back when the Germany army deadly need those critical supplies 。
If Japanse committed the Genocide in China ,that mean they must put
enormous resource into this unbelievable action,and they would get the same ending as Germany did,cashed by themselves.

[jiangji]

Nazi wasted vast  amount of resouce to kill 6 million jews,somehow the Genocide reallly hold them back when the Germany army deadly need those critical supplies  。
If Japanse committed the Genocide in China ,that mean they must put 
enormous resource into this unbelievable action,and they would get the same ending as Germany did,cashed by themselves.

I don't quite understand here. Do killing so many people requires so many resources. Didn't the Nazi exhausted most of their resources mainly because of their war with the Russia.

[Lesterado Molotov]

The Japanese Rightists have written books in the 1920s on what they would do if they have conquered China. Can't remember the details, but roughly:

1. Universal usage of the Chinese scripts.

2. Assimilate the Chinese into Japanese culture.

3. Chinese provided labour and Japanese provided organisational expertise and the brains.

This is not impossible because most Chinese before and during the Second World War were not happy with either the KMT (too corrupted) or the CCP (too radical, too many meetings).

If the Japanese had not commit atrocities, things would have been different, many Chinese might have been persuaded by them... Remember the movie "Farewell to my Concubine"? (After the Japanese invaders left...) The role played by Leslie Cheung commented that he should have bequeathed his art to the Japanese.

[Liang Jieming]

The Japanese Rightists have written books in the 1920s on what they would do if they have conquered China.  Can't remember the details, but roughly:

1. Universal usage of the Chinese scripts.

2. Assimilate the Chinese into Japanese culture.

3. Chinese provided labour and Japanese provided organisational expertise and the brains.

This is not impossible because most Chinese before and during the Second World War were not happy with either the KMT (too corrupted) or the CCP (too radical, too many meetings).

If the Japanese had not commit atrocities, things would have been different, many Chinese might have been persuaded by them...  Remember the movie "Farewell to my Concubine"?  (After the Japanese invaders left...) The role played by Leslie Cheung commented that he should have bequeathed his art to the Japanese.

1920s? Japan hadn't even gone into Manchuria yet. However, I do agree some of your points. Many Chinese intellectuals of the time were disgrunted with the Qing and looked to Japan for inspiration, including Dr. Sun. After the revolution, many people tried to emulate the Japanese modernisation. If Japan had stayed along the straight and narrow path, China would have looked east for guidance at least initially.

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria somewhat shattered that illusion but whether they could have pulled off a peaceful assimulation if they had been more decent in their subsequent actions is debatable. The promise of a Asian co-prosperity sphere was widely believed by many non-chinese peoples of SEA but they spoilt the goodwill with their actions. If the Japanese had made good on the promise, I can see how history would have been much, much different today. The Japanese could have cloaked their intentions even in China with their professed Asian Brotherhood and made even the Chinese believe in them. The Chinese in SEA too would not have resisted the Japanese replacement of their European colonial governments.

[Lesterado Molotov]

Hi Jieming,

Even after the Qing, the Chinese were not too happy with their own Guomingdang leaders and other warlords as well. You can read Lu Xun's novels on that. By 1905, though the Japanese did not conquer Manchuria, they already had control over the Southern Manchurian Railway (after defeating the Russians), hence de facto master of the province.

The Black Dragon Society of Japan has produced quite a number of literature on this.... creating Mongolian-Manchurian-Moslems-Tibetan-Han unity under Japanese guidance. Very interesting read, that China is like an old man requiring new injection of Japanese blood. Haha...

[Lesterado Molotov]

Almost forgot...

Sun Yat-sun and Chiang Kai-shek were both ardent admirers of Japanese culture. They were very 'nice' to the Japanese, almost selling away China to them! Can read Li Ao's books on these things.

[Daniel]

I don't quite understand here. Do killing so many people requires so many resources. Didn't the Nazi exhausted most of their resources mainly because of their war with the Russia.

Well, the Holocaust did require a lot of resources, especially huge numbers of trains occupied moving millions of people to extermination camps, which trains thus could not be used to move supplies to the front. Also many thousands of people are kept busy behind the lines in the Einsatzgruppen to murder people and many thousands of elite SS are kept busy guarding concentration camps instead of fighting or doing something more useful.

Still, you're right that fighting Russia was much more expensive in resources than the Holocaust was.

I don't think the Japanese atrocities in China were as expensive in resources as the German Holocaust; most of the killing seems to have been done by front-line soldiers, without the level of organization and systematic planning that was necessary to commit the Holocaust. Another difference was that the Nazis were making a systematic effort to cull out Jews, Gypsies, Communists and other scapegoated groups from the population and kill them, while the IJA doesn't seem to have spent much time worrying about whom to kill and whom not to.

[Viewer]

I'd say, if Japan manages to conqueor China, slowly China, Japan and Korea will become a new "Neo Japan". But depends on how Japan is going to treat China, there may be 2 possibilities.

1) Cruel and discrimination. China rebels, and Korea follows. Japan retreats back to their islands. China and Korea may become one new nation, or become China and Korea.

2) Nice and humane. All the cultures mix and blend together. It may happen that the Japanese Emporer will be regarded and the emporer of the nation. While Tokyo may be the initial capital. It may happens that the new capital will be built somewhere in Manchu or Korea. As the political leaders feel that it is better and easier for them to govern the great nation.

From the 2 possiblities, the 2nd one is far less to happen, judging from the situation and Japanese leaders' policies by then.

[Tibet Libre]

This is a rather emotional topic for most CHinese but what if the Japanese did succeed in conquering all of China? What would CHina be like today? WOuld there even be a China?

Rather no. I can't see the Japanese being assimilated by the Chinese no more than the Germans by the Russians in case of a successful occupation.

Don't forget, the Imperial Japanese approach to China showed theirs was a true cultural arrogance, bordering to megalomania. Therefore, you can't compare the Japanese invasion to the earlier threat to China by the culturally inferior nomadic people.

The Japanese, however cruel they were, had a high culture of their own and wouldn't be easily submitted to the Chinese way of things. In fact, the opposite would have been much more likely: With the Japanese in absolute power, the pressure and temptation for the Chinese upper and middle classes to Japanize would have been almost irresistible.

But then again, I don't think that would have ever happened because the Japanese racism simply left no space for any alignment. Japanese assertion of power in China was absolute, thus Chinese resistance had become total. Japan couldn't have hoped to occupy China other than by practically total destruction, with little left to govern.

Edited by Tibet Libre, 10 July 2005 - 06:13 PM.

[hira]

Japan would had just get hold of the coast and wealthy cities of the inside (beijing, nanjing) and left the countryside alone, probably to the communists. And that would have been probably quite controlable for them. Whatever crazy genocide and repopulation schemes the military clique may had had, later on economical reasoning rules.