President Xi just told President Trump that America and China fought together against Japan in World War II. That’s true of the Chinese people, but as a claim about the Chinese Communist Party, it’s total bullshit.
While Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist armies fought the major battles against the Japanese imperial forces and suffered devastating losses during World War II, Mao’s Communists largely avoided conflict as they saved their energies to defeat not the Japanese but the Chinese nationalists. This was a complete betrayal of the Chinese people.
Then the Party seized power in 1949 and commenced its catastrophic killing spree. More than 47 million Chinese people died under Communist rule, far more than were killed during Japan’s brutal war against China. What Mao did to China was far more murderous and deadly than even the horrors the Japanese imperial army unleashed in the rape of Nanjing.
Xi is acting as if the Chinese communists played any meaningful role in fighting the Japanese and is rewriting history to justify China’s aggression against Japan, America’s longtime ally. Trump, the American people, and the Chinese people should loudly call this dangerous lie what it is.
The world should stand with our Japanese friends, who have been pillars of global responsibility for eight decades, during which time the Chinese Communist Party has done so much harm to its own people and to the world.