Hot Issues of the War of Resistance Against Japan

Author: Rong Weimu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: It is often said that China and Japan are neighboring countries separated by a narrow strip of water. Before modern times, the two countries maintained peaceful exchanges for over a thousand years, and the traditional friendship between their peoples can be traced back to ancient times. Historically, due to the influence of the Chinese Han cultural sphere in East Asia, Japan consciously absorbed the cultural spirit of mainland China and learned its feudal political system. The development of its productive forces, cultural construction, and historical progress generally kept pace with or slightly lagged behind China. Many similarities also existed between China and Japan in terms of domestic production relations and class relations. When Western European countries broke free from the constraints of feudal production relations, underwent bourgeois revolutions, developed large-scale mechanized production, and subsequently entered the capitalist stage, Japan, like China, remained stuck in the decline of the feudal era. By the 19th century, the gap between Eastern and Western countries had widened. Britain, France, the Netherlands, and even the newly independent United States in the Americas had already completed their modern industrialization and were embarking on large-scale overseas colonial expansion to seek markets for the goods produced by their mechanized industries and to plunder the resources and wealth of underdeveloped regions. Meanwhile, China and Japan, as East Asian countries outside the center of capitalist development, were still intoxicated with the idea of the "Chinese Empire" or the "Greater Japanese Empire." By then, Western powers' merchant ships and warships powered by steam had already crossed vast oceans and reached their shores. China and Japan were almost simultaneously subjected to colonial aggression by Western capitalist countries in the mid-19th century. The "closed-door" policy of the Qing Dynasty in China and the long-term "sakoku" (lockdown) policy implemented by Japan's feudal shogunate were also simultaneously pierced by the strong ships and powerful guns of Western powers. Starting with the Opium War, capitalist powers such as Britain, France, the United States, and Russia launched a series of armed invasions against China, forcing the feudal Qing Dynasty to sign a series of humiliating unequal treaties. China, which was once an independent and sovereign nation, gradually fell under the exploitation of Western powers, losing nearly all its national rights and interests, suffering immense damage to its national dignity, and enduring unprecedented hardships for its people. At the same time, Japan also faced colonial aggression from Western powers. It can be said that from the 1840s, China and Japan faced almost the same fate, and their doors were almost simultaneously struck by the strong ships and powerful guns of Western powers. In the Second Opium War, China suffered defeat and was forced to sign the unequal Anglo-Chinese Treaty of Nanking with the British colonizers on August 29, 1842. The treaty stipulated: ceding Hong Kong Island to Britain, opening Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai as treaty ports, China paying Britain a indemnity of 21 million silver taels, the taxation of imported and exported goods in China being jointly determined by Britain and China, and British merchants being allowed to trade freely with Chinese merchants without the restrictions of the "Cohong" (a guild of foreign traders). In 1843, the British government forced the Qing Dynasty to sign the Regulations for the Five Ports Trade and the Supplementary Provisions for the Five Ports Trade (i.e., the Treaty of Humen) as appendices to the Treaty of Nanking, adding provisions such as extraterritoriality and unilateral most-favored-nation treatment. In July and October 1844, the United States and France took advantage of the chaos, imitating Britain, and successively forced the Qing Dynasty to sign the Sino-American Treaty of Wanghia and the Sino-French Treaty of Whampoa.