CENTURY OF THE DRAGON
1904/05- Russo-Japanese War
1911-Chinese Throne Abdicated
1914- WWI Begins
1917-Russian Revolution
1918- WWI Ends
1921-CCP is formed in China
1931-Japan Annexes Manchuria
1937-1945 WWII in China
1945-1949 Chinese Civil War
1949 Communist Revolution
Corruption and greed infested the new republic. Greedy land owners, warlords and European colonials scrambled for the scraps of the disintegrated empire. As a result, power was never centralized throughout the republic. Marxism offered an attractive alternative for the world's largest peasantry.
On 1 November 1931 the Chinese Soviet Republic was proclaimed and a young firey communist named Mao Zedong was its chairman. The Chinese Workers and Peasants Army was formed and mobilized to maintain its power.
During 1931 Japan first laid claim to the traditional Chinese territory of Manchuria and installed the deposed Manchu Emporer as its soveriegn. Renamed Manchukuo, it was presented as an independent Asian kingdom. No major government of the earth, save the Vatican, ever recognized it as such.
An ambitious Chinese army officer, Chaing Kai-Chek was trained in the military and political academies of Soviet Russia. A socialist by affiliation, his ambitions should have paralleled that of Mao's. Instead he was part of the new post 1911 revolutionary nationalist government. A military heavyweight in the nationalist-socialist Koumungtang, he was head of the national academy charged to train an officer corps and form a new national army.
As Mao and Chaing both struggled to expel the Japanese invaders they consolidated their individual power bases and formed provisional governments around themselves. Mao and his Communists found legitimacy in the sponsorship of the Soviet Union. Chaing and his Koumintang found symapthy in the west, particularly in the United States.
After the Second World War, China's two great leaders found themselves at the frontier of the new Cold War. The first battles to claim millions in a war described as "cold" would take place on Chinese soil. Ultimately Chaings Nationalists would lose the ground war and be forced to retreat to the island of Formosa, forming the new nation of Taiwan. Both nations would claim the right to be called "People's Republic of China."
The vestiges of the Koumintang that did not escape to taiwan were left at the mercy of Mao's terrible vengence. The "free" peoples of Taiwan would struggle for decades under the heavy-hand of martial law on their tiny island nation. Taiwan would claim independence and have its soveriegnty ensured by United States naval power. Communist China would view Taiwan as a rougue province and still do to this day.
With the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the passing of Chairman Mao, a new China emerged and took leadership in the now fragmented world of Communism.
On the battlefields of Korea, between 1950 and 1953, China and the United States waged open warfare. Suffering a sound defeat, the Chinese were forced to respect United States military resolve. But the policy of Chinese appeasement since the Vietnam War has moved the cold war's frontier to the waters just off Taiwan. Open trade policies with the United States have made China an economic juggernaut that surpasses that of old Soviet Union
Both nations have much to lose in open warfare over the tiny nation of Taiwan. Both have much to lose in power and and political influence if they backdown. Now is the waiting game to see which side loses the latest global game of chicken.
Tom Clancy
April of 2005 turned out to be a tummultous month in China. More then fifty years have passed since Japan's brutal occupation. Not only Jews and the allied veterans who liberated them, but all honest students of history are offended by holocaust deniers. Not only does it insult ones intelligence, but it desecrates the graves of all who were crushed under a Nazi boot.
In Tokyo you can visit a museum where a proud old steam powered railroad locomotive is lovingly cared for. It is a symbol of Japanese power during the Second World War. On it are many plaques that tell a visitor the story of the mighty Thai-Burma Railway and how it first brought "civilization" to a backward region of Asia. No where do they mention that between ties that bind the rails of that railroad, lie the graves of 116,000 slaves.
Just as no one should ever stand by and watch a generation taught that Aushwitz never was a death factory, or that Wounded Knee was not a blight upon the proud record of the U. S. Army,
