It is bad enough that the Chinese Communist Party is staging a massive military parade on Wednesday to rewrite history and portray itself as one of the main victors of World War II as it seeks to build up its image as a global leader, but making things worse was Associated Press China reporter Ken Moritsugu’s mostly uncritical Tuesday article that helped spread the Party line.
Under the headline “China’s military parade is a show of strength from a country devastated in World War II,” right away, Moritsugu helped the CCP in its revisionist project:
Yang Huafeng, a 92-year-old Chinese army veteran, remembers the troops on horseback and the handful of planes that marked the founding of communist China in 1949.
It was a far cry from the military might the country will display Wednesday in a parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. A Japanese invasion before and during the conflict devastated China and left millions of people dead.
‘Now you see our country’s planes ... no one dares to mess with them,’ the veteran told journalists at a war museum in the city of Shenyang. His chest covered with ribbons and medals, Yang expressed pride in his country’s rise.
It was not until later that Moritsugu gave any indication that the overwhelming majority of the fighting and dying in the China Theater was done by the Nationalists, not the Communists, “The party didn’t always make such a big deal about the end of the war. The Communists only came to power four years later, and the bulk of the fighting was done by their rivals, the Nationalist government they overthrew in 1949.”
That should’ve been the theme of the whole article. Not one sentence buried in paragraph eight.
However, Moritsugu was just getting started, “The ruling Communist Party is trying to amplify that feeling by playing up the war anniversary with spruced-up museums, new war movies and the military parade, attended by leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.”
Those movies are straight historical garbage, but that aside, Moritsugu added, “To the outside world, the missiles, tanks and fighter jets at the parade will be a show of strength as China seeks to portray itself as an alternative to the American-dominated postwar era.”
He further comments, “Domestically, the commemoration is an effort to show how far the country has come — and in so doing, build support for the party and its leader, President Xi Jinping. China was a major front in World War II, a fact often overlooked in accounts that focus more on the fight for Europe and U.S. naval battles in the Pacific.”
In addition to only casually mentioning how it wasn’t the communists that did most of the fighting against the Japanese, this move to diminish the U.S. role in defeating Japan also means Moritsugu helped the CCP memory hole the $700 million in aid the U.S. gave China.
As China seeks to beat its chest about its increasing power, Moritsugu marveled, “Xi, who came to power in 2012, has stepped up a drive to build a strong country that can no longer be bullied. His government pushed back against new U.S. tariffs this year, forcing President Donald Trump to scale them down.”
Moritsugu concluded by quoting University of Tokyo China expert Shin Kawashima, ‘“China is trying to say that it was a key member leading the establishment of the postwar global order,’ he said, ‘and that it has now reached a stage where it is catching up with and overtaking the United States.’”
The Chinese Communist Party is trying to take credit for something it did not earn in order to make foreign policy gains at the expense of the country that aided China 80 years ago. That is the story Moritsugu should’ve told.
