Did Mao Zedong Thank Japan for Invading China
It is well known in 1972 when Mao Zedong met with Japanese Prime Minister Takuei in Nanjing, he said
“(Japan) doesn’t have to say sorry, you had contributed towards China, why? Because had Imperial Japan did not start the war of invasion, how could we communist became mighty powerful? How could we stage the coup d’état? How could we defeat Chiang Kai Shek? How are we going to pay back you guys? No, we do not want your war reparations!”
Did Mao thank Japanese for invading China sincerely or he just make jokes like his defenders said? I think with enough history records it is not so difficult to get the right conclusion.
Mao’s gratitude to Japan’s invasion was not only reflected on his speeches with Japanese, but also recorded on the official documents of the CCP which could explain the history and Mao’s thought development in a best manner.
With more and more dossiers disclosed from the KMT, CCP ,USSR and Japan in the latest decade, it was generally accepted Mao and the CCP from the very beginning had no material interest in fighting against the Japanese, their collusion withZhang Xueliang to establish a certain kind of autonomous government in Northwestern China drove the latter to launch the Xi’an Incident in Dec 1936. Mao’s original plan was to execute the captured Chiang Kai-shek to take revenge, only with strong opposition from Stalin and his insistence of CCP’s establishment of an Anti-Japanese Alliance with the KMT(as to contain the Japanese army and prevent it from conflict with the USSR), did Mao reluctantly agree to release Chiang and establish the so-called alliance.
Actually after the peaceful settlement of Xi’an Incident and official establishment of the alliance, on Aug 22nd-25th an Enlarged Politburo Meeting of the CCP was held at Luochuan, which focused on the anti-Japan strategies. Mao had made a speech, in which he claimed:
“Keep calm, we should not go to the battlefront acting as heroes. We should avoid the face-fact conflict with the Japanese, carry out the guerrilla war against them behind them. We should try to strengthen our Eighth Route Army, establish anti-Japanese power base. We should spare no effort to maintain and strengthen our armed forces, delay or reject KMT’s orders of going to the battlefront by all excuses. Only after the Japanese killed the KMT armies as more as possible could we harvet the fruits of anti-Japanese and topple the KMT regime. We should take advantage the heavenly bestowed chance to develop ourselves when the Japanese army conquered China. And We should defeat the exhausted KMT and take over the whole China after the victory of Anti-Japanese War.
Someone thought to be patriots, we should play more active role in anti-Japanese war. But the patriotism here was only loving the country of Chiang Kai-shek, the motherland of our CCP members are the common motherland of all communist party members all over the world(i.e. the USSR). Our policy is to allow the Japanese army to occupy as more lands as possible, which results in the three kingdoms of Chiang, Japan and us, and the situation will be most favorite to us. The worst scenario is just Japan occupying the whole China and we can fight back with the help from the USSR. As to develop our armed forces and take over the whole China after the war, our party should strictly abide by the policy’ 10 percent on anti-Japanese, 20 percent for playing Tai Ji and 70 percent on development’(一分抗日， 二分应付，七分发展). No one and no organization could violate such policy.”
Although this speech has not been collected by Mao’s Official Selected Works published by the CCP due to its sensitivity, it could be verified from different sources beyond any doubt. Moreover, Zhang Wentian, the incumbent General Secretary of the CCP also in his opening speech claimed the CCP should follow the strategy of making the invaders and rulers lose at both sides and the communist party seizing the opportunity to take power proposed by Lenin during the WWI. Although there have been disagreements from Zhou Enlai and military leaders such as Zhu De and Peng Dehuai, Mao and Zhang’s opinions prevailed.
Stalin was very unhappy with Mao’s overtly agreeing but covertly opposing style as this might thwart his plan of containment of Japan by Chinese forces. In Dec 1937 Stalin sent Wang Ming back to China to enforce the alliance policy. Subject to Stalin’s authority, Mao had reluctantly carried out the policy. During this period, the patriotic and zealous military leaders such as Zhu, Peng and Lin Biao launched certain campaigns including Battle of Pingxingguan and Hundred Regiments Offensive to support KMT’s resistance at the frontal battlefield, and the Yangtze Bureau of the CCP led by Wang and Zhou did succeed in cooperation with the KMT and propaganda of anti-Japanese campaigns.
However, when Mao launched Yan’an Rectification Movement to strengthen his grip of power, campaigns were launched to denounce and criticize leaders such as Wang in the name of dogmatism, Zhou and Peng in the name of empiricism. Under the body and mental duress and coerce, the CCP leaders had to reach de facto consensus and succumb to Mao’s cult of personality. Ever since then, there was no more large scale campaign against Japanese army and the focuses returned to establishment of power base and conflicts with the KMT.
In particular, compared with the Eighth Route Army, the CCP’s another armed force the New 4th Army never launched any major offensive movement against Japanese and its only business was in conflict with the KMT forces and occupying territories. The KMT force led by General Han Deqin succeeded in resisting Japanese army from conquering the Northern Jiangsu Area for several years. But the New 4th Army led by Chen Yi and Su Yu annihilated Han’s most troops and retreated soon after conquering such areas, giving away the territories to the Japanese army without any resistance. Furthermore, under Mao’s instruction, the New 4th Army kept secret contact with the Japanese and Wang Jingwei’s puppet government, colluding with them to fight against the ROC and KMT. In recent published Mao: The Man Who Colluded with Japanese Army written by Professor Endo of University of Tsukuba, she used convincing evidences collected from dossiers in China, Taiwan and Japan to prove Mao colluding with Iwai Mansion(岩井公馆） , the Japanese secret service in Shanghai to fight against KMT. And it did explain why the envoys of Mao, Pan Hannian and Rao Shushi were shortly purged without any justified excuse after 1949.
After the establishment of the PRC, at Lushan Conference held in 1959, Mao denounced and purged Peng Dehuai due to his open criticism of the practices of the Great Leap Forward. As an intolerant and paranoid dictator obsessed with power, Mao disclosed his historic grievance with Peng by boasting about his great achievements and denouncing Peng’s wrongful routes during the Anti-Japanese War. When Mao reviewed the history, he repeated his speech at Luo Chuan by mentioning” Someone thought the less lands occupied by the Japanese the better,and only later reached consensus with others that it was patriotic to allow the Japanese to occupy more lands. Otherwise the patriotism will mean loving the country of Chiang. Actually it was the three kingdoms of Chiang, Japan and us” after Lin Biao criticized himself for launching the Battle of Pingxingguan.
From the history records, we can know Mao’s speech of thanking Japan was consistent with his policies and practices, which was the reflection of his true thoughts and feelings as he was obsessed with his success in toppling the KMT government and taking the power.He just regarded this pacification strategy was necessary for the great achievement and didn’t care about the suffering of China and Chinese people, which was inherent and coherent in most of his thoughts and practices. When you understand this, there will be nosurprise to you at all.
