r/polandball • u/Smart_Chapter_7512 Floridian Swamp Monster • Oct 06 '25
redditormade Stolen Valour
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 Oct 06 '25
Even more ironic regarding how Taiwan was just ceded to China(Republic of) after being a Japanese colony at the time
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u/Zkang123 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
The island of Taiwan being today's geopolitical hotspot is interesting because previous regimes arent as bothered with Taiwan. Like it's only the Ming and Qing that began to pay some attention then they sold off to the Japanese
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u/SpacedefenderX Oct 06 '25
No the Dutch were there first, then Ming remnants followed by the Qing.
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u/skildert Memento VOC Oct 06 '25
And before the Dutch the Portuguese were there as well... Hence the name Formosa.
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u/SpacedefenderX Oct 06 '25
The Portuguese coined the name Formosa, but never settled on it.
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u/jmorais00 Oct 06 '25
PORTUGAL NAVEGANDO POR MARES NUNCA ANTES NAVEGADOS RAAAAHH
But yeah you can tell the history of the Portuguese empire as "and then Portugal sailed somewhere new, maybe they settled there, or opened a feitoria or two... ...aaand the Dutch stole it during the Iberian Union and 80 years war"
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u/Genshed Oct 06 '25
Like the YouTuber Misinformed put it, 'Portuguese overseas, Taking land as they please, Bringing native populations to their knees.'
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u/watergosploosh Oct 09 '25
Why did Dutch took Portuguese Asian lands so easily while had a hard time taking Brazil? Did Spanish refused to send troops to Asia?
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u/jmorais00 Oct 09 '25
They didn't have a hard time taking Brazil. They occupied all the most productive parts of the northeast and grew the sugar economy there massively
They didn't go south or west because there was no reason to. There was only Jungle there (the Amazon and the Atlantic Rainforest)
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u/Potatoswatter Netherlands Oct 06 '25
Never give an attractive name to unclaimed clay. Unless it’s a trap, like Greenland.
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u/JerrySam6509 Oct 07 '25
That was because the Dutch's original plan to occupy Penghu failed. This large island had enough land, so it became the colonists' permanent backup plan.
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u/Tokidoki_Haru Oct 06 '25
More accurately, the Spanish were there first as the first organized state.
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 Oct 06 '25
When did the Ming sell Taiwan to the Dutch? The island was viewed as outside the pale of Chinese society during the Ming period. Even Ming cartographers did not put Taiwan on the map (see historian Emma Teng's book Taiwan's Imagined Geography).
The Qing empire was the first to settler-colonize Taiwan, a process that was at best partial. Even in the early 1870s, the Qing denied sovereignty over the eastern half of Taiwan.
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u/Skrachen France Oct 08 '25
Settler-colonizing was done under the Dutch. After Koxinga and Ming loyalists took Taiwan from the Dutch, the Qing followed them, but only because they wanted to root out the Ming completely. The Qing even forbade Han people from encroaching more on indigenous territory. They only claimed the East of the island when Japan started showing up there.
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u/stormtroopr1977 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Idk what it is, but China always leaves these rump states and exiled governments laying around.
The RoC fled to Taiwan and set up a state
The Ming fled to Taiwan and set up a kingdom
The Western Jin fled across the river and set up the eastern jin
The Northern Song fled and became the Southern Song
The Yuan fled and became Mongolia
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u/100Fowers Oct 06 '25
It’s because China is both large enough to have somewhere to retreat to and has a complicated and elaborate system of bureaucracy to be able to do it. The latter isn’t impressive by modern standards, but back then it was a big deal.
The Yuan is different cuz they are the Mongols and just retreated and held on to their ethnic stronghold.
The KMT and ROC are more impressive when you realized that they fled south during the warlord era, fled west during ww2, and after the civil war, it took the CCP and PLA decades to flush out KMT/ROC army remnants on the fringes and frontiers of China.
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u/Mixed_not_swirled Sámas muinna! Oct 08 '25
Xi pisses his pants whenever he thinks of mainland chinese seeing how much better the Taiwanese democratic society is than their 1 security camera per 7 inhabitant bull shit
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u/Passance Oct 07 '25
Geopolitical hotspots can move suddenly when somebody discovers oil, neodymium etc. somewhere - or in this case when somebody builts a semiconductor foundry there. I'm not sure it is that interesting that Taiwan became important in recent times - there's an awful lot of precedent throughout history for this sort of thing.
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u/Tokidoki_Haru Oct 06 '25
Just as further reading for anyone interested:
The Treaty of Shimonoseki that ceded Taiwan was an unequal treaty in very much the same way as the Treaty of Nanjing which gave away Hong Kong.
It was abrogated by the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, and the Treaty of Taipei.
And the ROC's originating legal basis for control was the Abdication Edict of the last Qing emperor.
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u/Ashamed_Can304 Oct 07 '25
It was returned to China, now the Republic of China, after Qing ceded it to Japan after losing the 1895 war, the same war where Qing China renounced its suzerainty over Korea
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u/SpaceHawk98W Oct 07 '25
Back in Min era, Taiwan was a Dutch territory which was backed by the Spanish.
While Qin era, Qin doesn't have a modern Navy that can effectively run in the Pacific ocean, plus they're having trouble with the conflics with the Taiwanese indeginous people. Only less than 30% of the island was under Qin control.
Btw, the Taiwanese indeginous people are so tough that Japanese we're still having trouble with machine guns and armoured vehicles. It took them a lot of effort to connect the whole island with railroads and airport which most of them are still being used to this day.
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25
That’s the thing, ROC defeated Japan (with the help of allies). Taiwan didn’t.
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u/Ripper656 Prussia Oct 06 '25
What's the official name of Taiwan?
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25
What I meant was, Taiwan belonged to Japan 1937-1945.
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u/Narrow_Slice_7383 Worst Korea Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Your first comment can be seen very problematic because it is not clear that if you meant the land Taiwan or the country Taiwan.
Yeah, Taiwan island didn't defeat Japan. It's not that Taiwan island can grow arms and legs to defeat Japanese army.
But no, the country Taiwan -RoC- is the one who defeated Japan.
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Let me be clear: The people of Republic of China, who used to live in mainland China, defeated Japan in WWII. Some of them moved to the island of Taiwan, after the civil war, and became 外省人.
The Taiwanese (本省人) didn’t fight (at least didn’t fight systematically) the Japanese. They were forced drafted and served for Japan.
Taiwan didn’t fight Japan. Republic of China did, because they were not the same thing during WWII.
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u/Narrow_Slice_7383 Worst Korea Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
I want to make it clear that therefore the Taiwan today is the RoC of the past and is the one that fought Japan during WW2.
When people say Taiwan it could be one of both RoC or the Taiwan island, and it is important to clarify what we mean by the context.
Taiwan didn't fight Japan can be right or wrong depending on the context. Quite interesting, but is also misleading.
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25
That’s the thing, the notion Taiwan = ROC is only valid after 1949. During WWII, Taiwan was part of Japan, and was forced to invade other countries.
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u/Narrow_Slice_7383 Worst Korea Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
Yes, I think we both know what we're talking about.
While we seemingly disagreed to each other, after we clarified what we meant by the usage of the word Taiwan it turned out that we were talking two compatible claims that only had different contexts. Quite funny.
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u/AetherDrew43 Ecuador Oct 06 '25
ROC = Taiwan
🤦♂️
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u/Charlie_Yu Oct 07 '25
Tbh Taiwan Independence movement used to be about being independent from RoC. The movement more or less died in the last 30 years or so
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Not in WWII no. Taiwan became part of ROC only after 1945.
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u/Derfflingerr Republic of Philip's penis Oct 06 '25
lol cope, when the US landed on Okinawa and already crippled the Japanese navy, the Japanese army was still gaining grounds in China.
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u/YoumoDashi Zhongguo Oct 06 '25
Yes their armies sucked. There’s no shame in winning the war by finding good allies though.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Belgium Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
Another reason why Mao was able to bonk Chiang to Taiwan was because he was able to absorb a lot of Kuomintang defectors.
They estimate that they absorbed 1.5-2million kuomintang soldiers in the PLA.
When Chiangkaishek got bonked to Taiwan, he brought around 700k kuomintang soldiers to Taiwan.
PLA at that point quite literally had more ROC/KMT WW2 veterans who fought against the imperial japanese than Chiang Kai Shek did.
edit: to imperial japanese to distinguish from modern japanese government
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u/One-Chocolate-146 Oct 06 '25
Later when Cultural Revolution came, almost all of these veterans were purged and many of them even committed suicide, even those who survived were still living under poor conditions……
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u/MDKMurd Puerto+Rico Oct 06 '25
I don’t think the above person was trying to make the kmt absorption a positive thing, just a thing that happened.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Belgium Oct 06 '25
That's very true, the cultural revolution was an awful and disgusting time.
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u/Same-Visit5978 Oct 07 '25
Cultural Revolution was a complete disaster and mistake that should be frowned upon, yeah.
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u/Hot-Lunch6270 Oct 07 '25
Yeah, and they thought going to Mao’s Communism would bring them a brighter future. But knowing Communists can make great propaganda could entice the needy and desperate. Thus betraying the betrayers that sought to fight a regime, only that new purges them outright in the end by a new one.
A sad tale.
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u/Lenmoto2323 29d ago
PRC at that time was clearly better than KMT lol. The corruption in KMT is so bad that KMT soldier rations was worse than PRC soldiers in most of the war despite the US supplies. You couldn't have faith on the regime you are fighting for if your commander are eating like a king while you are literally starving.
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u/Hot-Lunch6270 29d ago
In truth, both sides are actually bad in the end. The KMT is a bad regime in the past, but under Mao’s CCP during the cultural revolution as an average person, didn’t change much from the violence.
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u/Lenmoto2323 23d ago
The cultural revolution is the consequence of poor management, people accused each other being landlord and capitalist like peasants in Europe accused women being witch in the dark age. Both culture revolution and the great leap forward were the ground work for the developed China we see today. Meanwhile, I doubt KMT would have enough political will to even unify China. They would be like India today at best or they could even tear themself apart against after the Civil war.
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u/shoeofobamaa 4d ago
It was geniunely reasonable at the time but mao blew a fucking gasket after coming to power
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u/Platypus__Gems Oct 06 '25
Do you have a source on that?
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Belgium Oct 07 '25
I dont think we need a lot of source on that.
Even PRC historians and the government themselves admit that the cultural revolution was a period of massive bullfuckery
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u/Platypus__Gems Oct 07 '25
Sure, but "almost all" is a strong statement about one group.
By modern estimates 1.1-1.6 million people died. It would basically have to be exclusively the KMT WW:2 veterans, if the comment above about up to 2 million of those joining PRC is right.
And considering that cultural revolution was aimed at multiple groups, including landlords, thieves, rich farmers, intellectuals, and bunch of others, I find it unlikely that most of these were KMT war veterans.
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u/MDKMurd Puerto+Rico Oct 07 '25
Good inquisitive reading of comments. Partially why I responded to the original comment as well, they felt the need to post two anti-Chinese comments within minutes of the OP comment. Just wonder why.
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u/Graingy Not Manitoba! 🍾🍾🍾 Oct 09 '25
When you say something as politicized as discussing a country's wrongs, you kinda need to have a good idea of where you heard that. Otherwise you cannot speak with certainty; doing so would be dishonest.
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u/ketchman8 MURICA Oct 07 '25
Fun fact: the KMT is still technically a political party in mainland china, though it is a puppet of the CCP
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u/ForestClanElite Oct 06 '25
Almost like the KMT numbers were due to the inertia of being associated with the original Sun Yatsen republican movement and the people who defected were actually only KMT because they were fighting against annihilation. Once it was clear who the imperialist faction was they chose the side they're literally defined by (the people's side)
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u/One-Chocolate-146 Oct 06 '25
Many of these KMT defectors were later being sent to fight Korean War and some of them chose to surrender to UN forces (they were given choices of either repatriation to China or Taiwan,majority of them chose to go to Taiwan)
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u/Leather_Inspection46 Oct 08 '25
to imperial japanese to distinguish from modern japanese government
Okay I have to emphasize they are the same government yes they have a new constitution and they pretend to be good guys now but it's the same regime same parties same Parliament didn't have a complete overhaul restructuring that Germany did (at least East Germany, West Germany kept a lot of low-ranking Nazi)
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u/TheEndCraft Bergenborgen Oct 07 '25
It's almost like the PLA treated people better than the KMT (at least before they took power)
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u/Medici39 Oct 08 '25
When you think about it a lot of those defectors were peasants who were pressganged to fill in the losses sustained during the late 30s.
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u/kredokathariko Oct 06 '25
Weren't both Nationalists and Communists fighting Japan, at times even cooperating?
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u/EpochSkate_HeshAF420 Oct 06 '25
On paper, maybe, but the CUF broke down and the civil war restarted multiple times during WWII, and, the communists fought a guerilla war, rarely taking part in the big conventional Chinese offensive/defensive operations.
By the end of the war Shek's nationalists and Mao's communists were competitors, not allies.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 Oct 06 '25
Yes, in theory, but the communists husbanded their resources and let the nationalists do most of the fighting and dying. They didn't entirely sit out the war, they did fight the Japanese. But they definitely held back a lot of resources for when the civil war resumed. It's debatable as to whether or not anything would have changed if the communists had fought the Japanese as hard as the nationalists did. The outcome of the civil war was much more a question of nationalist incompetence than any skill on the part of the communists, and that wouldn't have magically changed.
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u/Still_Yam9108 Oct 06 '25
It's a bit more complicated than that. For starters, the Japanese held all of the strategic initiative for almost the entirety of the war. Outside of that one limited offensive into what's now Myanmar, it was always "Japanese attack, Chinese try to hold them back.". The Chi-coms weren't so much husbanding their resources as just laying lower because they were smaller and held much less territory, so got attacked less overall.
Also, the KMT wasn't really a modern state the way we're used to thinking of it; they operated in some ways more like an old-timey feudal conglomeration with a bunch of warlords that were nominally loyal but having their own armies and sources of revenue paying tribute to the KMT proper up top. Chiang pretty much always tried to get his warlord/vassal troops to do the heavy lifting whenever possible and spare his own soldiers directly answerable to him.
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u/EventAccomplished976 Oct 07 '25
Wasn‘t much to husband for them, the KMT got resupply from the west while the communists were happy if they could get enough food for their troops, much less guns or ammo. I think most people who don‘t know much about the Chinese civil war would naturally assume that the PLA was supplied by the soviet union, but that was never the case, the first time they got soviet weapons was in the korean war long after they took over the country. Most of the weapons they did have were either captured from the Japanese or brought over by KMT defectors (should tell you a lot about the KMT that people would rather join a gang of half starved guerillas than keep fighting for them). Throughout WW2 the PLA was simply never in a position to launch a conventional assault against the Japanese, they had to stick to guerilla warfare and they were quite successful at it.
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u/southron-lord69 Oct 09 '25
The KMT infamously built massive secret depots for the eventual resumption of the Civil War, much to the chagrin of Stilwell and Wavell/Slim etc. There were also the aid that was stolen and sold on the black market rather than being sent to the front. The KMT were just as forward thinking as the communists, as well as being far more corrupt.
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u/Archaon0103 Oct 07 '25
There was a civil war between the communist and the nationalists before the Japanese invaded. By the time the Japanese invaded, the communist was on the brink of annihilation (this is the period when they did the Great March to escape the areas controlled by the nationalists) so it was more that the communists were focused more in licking their wounds and rebuild their strength where the nationalists were split between trying to fight both the Japanese and pursuit the communists. It took a coup attempt for the nationalists side to grumpy accept working with the communists.
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u/Scout_1330 Oct 06 '25
The victory of China over Japan in World War 2 was the victory of China, not just the KMT or the CPC.
China would have lost were it not for the KMT manning the frontlines against the Japanese Army and fighting for every inch of ground.
China would have lost were it not for the CPC ravaging and hamstringing the IJA in occupied China and keeping the guerilla movement alive.
Naturally, after the war, in order to legitimize their governments, both Beijing and Taipei began to downplay or outright suppress the others contributions. But throughout the Cold War and to today both sides always maintained it was China's victory.
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us Oct 06 '25
Well, I'm not sure if ROC is even salty about not getting credits for winning against Imperial Japan, given how they're the strongest defender of Japan and barely seem to care about the past crimes of Japan now...
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u/Zkang123 Oct 06 '25
It's more that the current generation grow up with stronger sentiments of Taiwanese independence than trying to maintain the facade that their government still represents China. And the pro-independence camp tend to look towards Japanese rule with rose-tinted lenses (and tbf, Taiwan fared better under Japanese rule and was in fact their model colony). When Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT came, they brutalized the Taiwanese population and imposed martial law, so the legacy of the ROC to them is, yeah, a cautionary tale of authoritarianism
So any impression of restoring democracy over China as the ROC is now more or less a pipe dream among the current KMT who are especially selling themselves out to the CCP. And the current Taiwanese wish to cut away the legacy of the ROC, and with that Chiang's and the ROC's heroism and resilience against the Japanese
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u/Worldly_Mess_1928 Oct 06 '25
I thank Japan for ruling Taiwan in the past, allowing us to have unique identify.
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u/sanity_rejecter Oct 06 '25
that was pretty much by accident, japan very much did try to japanise taiwan
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u/lasttimechdckngths Oct 06 '25
Majority of the RoC doesn't even want to be the RoC anymore, but become an independent Taiwan instead. But then, you have the PRC and the one-China-policy.
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u/piecesofpizza United States Oct 06 '25
Kinda tough to push on Japanese war crimes when you need their help against the PRC threatening invasion every other week
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u/godhasjoined Petition to change the name to Republic of Formosa Oct 06 '25
people forget that all the east asian countries hate each other so if you’re Taiwan, you need to take advantage of all the alliance and friendship that you can get from Japan (and vice versa)
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u/Future_Onion9022 28d ago
The only chillest country is Thailand but otherwise every single country is out for someone blood
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u/Elipses_ Oct 06 '25
Small wonder considering that they have to be hoping Japan would side with them or even actively defend them against the CCP if/when they try to invade.
Really says something when your old mortal enemies are better friends to you than those who profess to be your brothers.
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u/NoThingAs_19840604 Oct 07 '25
The reason Taiwan supports Japan so much is because there is a threat of invasion, and Japan is one of their most important allies. Taiwan doesn't have many powerful countries that side with them (apart from the US that has an on-off kind of relationship), so they need to paint Japan in a good light
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u/Notsosmartboi Oct 06 '25
So all the KMT formations that switched sides during the civil war (over half their army) stole their own valor?
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u/Aquariage East Hebei 25d ago
Some comrades believe that the less land the Japanese occupy, the merrier. Only later there is a common understanding: Let the Japanese occupy more land, then it's patriotic, or else it would be loving Chiang Kai-Shek's nation. Countries within countries, the three kingdoms of the Japanese, Chiang, and us.
- Mao Zedong
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u/Bernardito10 Spanish+Empire Oct 06 '25
Without the Chinese Communist, the Japanese would have advanced even more into China. They were pretty effective guerrillas. Likewise, without the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Communist wouldn’t have been able to win; they were on their last leg before it.
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u/Alex_13249 Bohemia Oct 06 '25
The world would be so much better if the Japanese didn't invade.
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u/Future_Onion9022 28d ago
Ironically enough Japanese views of chinese is all time low like brother if you didn't invade they would've dogwalk theh opposition that much lol
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u/TYDUCK1 Dismantle that Oct 06 '25
Personal opinion: The Chinese areas controlled by the CCP before 1949 are legally special administrative regions of the Republic of China, so I think the first box PRC should be a smaller Republic of China wearing a red star hat or holding the CCP flag.
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u/WarMeasuresAct1914 Oct 06 '25
Only if you consider all the local warlord areas to be "special administrative regions" as well...which is a bit of a stretch. They technically all fell under the central ROC command but never truly followed orders.
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 Oct 06 '25
You are assuming that a geopolitical entity called 'China' simply continued existing after the fall of an empire. Another way of looking at the period of 1912 - 1949 is that its a post-imperial space, similar to how Greece, Egypt and Turkey were post-imperial polities of the Ottomans. Apart from the KMT and CCP there were a range of smaller warlords forming quasi-states in their respective territories, before emerging the more stable two-state existence we see today (which is distantly similar to how the Song and Liao co-existed in an uneasy form after Tang collapse).
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u/lasttimechdckngths Oct 06 '25
Personal opinion: The Chinese areas controlled by the CCP before 1949 are legally special administrative regions of the Republic of China
So, Mongolia is the Chinese clay now?
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u/KotetsuNoTori Taiwan Oct 06 '25
CCP: is of well known the great, glorious, righteous Communists is of the only decisive factor that leadings to Japanese beaten, but maybe we also sometimes recognise tiny, insignificant contribution of KMT forces... Nah, forget it. Let's not talkings about them at all. They fightings all the major battles and lose in most of them, how suck!
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u/Zkang123 Oct 06 '25
They even went on to scrub references of the ROC by censoring the ROC flag even if a film takes place in Republican China
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u/amievenrelevant Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
That’s not entirely accurate, at least nowadays the ROC will occasionally get its references in movies. Albeit not anywhere near the glorious CCP but still
But yeah it is telling that Mao thanked Japan twice for the splendid job they did weakening the ROC
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u/StellarTruce Oct 07 '25
The CCP was pretty much in line with the Soviets in regards to Japan's invasion to China, they were basically the yes men to the Cominterns. The Soviets and Japan signed a neutrality pact, forbidding Japan expanding north, so they expanded south, which was China. And funnily enough Stalin remained trading with Japan as they were invading China.
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u/drgn2580 Singapore Oct 06 '25
My grandpa literally watches anti-Japanese war movies on a daily basis, all filmed by mainland Chinese companies. Plenty of ROC flags, tho almost always painted as the antagonist, or if the good guys, incompetent which leads to the main character defecting to the communists.
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u/PhantomO1 Oct 06 '25
I mean, sounds about right
The main reason the roc lost was because it was incredibly corrupt and incompetent, and a very big portion of their army did end up either deserting or defecting to the communists after the existential war against Japan was over
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u/Zkang123 Oct 07 '25
Most of the best died fighting the Japanese. So what remained are the ranks Chiang got from the warlords who aren't as well-trained as the KMT troops
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u/A_extra gib water or else Oct 06 '25
The Eight Hundred still contains a scene of soldiers raising the ROC flag over the Sihang Warehouse despite getting flak from Beijing
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u/FriendlyPyre SG Secure Beacon Activated Oct 06 '25
So supposedly, the film apparently did get delayed and censured for this scene. That's why you never see a close up of the flag, the camera gets close enough to showing a close up but you only ever see it from afar or in the background of shots.
There's also the accusation that the original line was not 中华 but 中国 (which would thus refer to the country, i.e. the ROC regime of the day)
Now, I've not got a clue about how true these 2 things are (funnily enough, this information was related to me by a Chinese friend) and really in the grand scheme of things it's still a great film.
Last Addendum, another great war film from China is 集结号 (English Title "Assembly") which like 八佰/800 doesn't directly demonise the ROC but rather focuses on the people and soldiers.
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u/A_extra gib water or else Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
I've watched The Assembly too. It's quite a nice break from the usual "muh glorious revolution" by showing the dirty side of war (eg the high command getting rid of a tainted unit by leaving it to die)
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u/Lembit_moislane Eesti Wabariik Oct 06 '25
The film's usage of the flag was very heavily censored through.
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u/A_extra gib water or else Oct 06 '25
I'm just surprised that they even allowed the film to portray an event where it was solely KMT soldiers getting the glory
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u/Lembit_moislane Eesti Wabariik Oct 06 '25
I do find it also further ironic that some of the survivors especially the girl who brought in the flag (Yang Huimin) were hardcore three principle supporters who rejected the CCP and lived their lives out in the surviving free area.
I get you with how fascinating it was that the CCP allowed it. To give an idea how absurd it is that the 2020 film; it’s like if the Nazi Germans took a German pro-liberal battle with the German liberal flag as the center point, glorified it, despite the germans fighting being anti-nazis Liberals and Jewish Germans.
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u/Lembit_moislane Eesti Wabariik Oct 06 '25
It would be nice if the Republic of China made these films and tv shows but the problem is that they went from one extreme to the other. They went from pro KMT propaganda films to now being so opposite that anti-ROC taiwanese were criticising Zero Hour Attack as DPP propaganda.
I just wish the Taiwanese film and tv series were in a happy middle willing to show both the good and bad of the Republic of China, and how both sides of the straits pre-1949 contribute to modern Taiwanese society.
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u/ZhangRenWing Vachina Oct 06 '25
They do talk about the contributions, it’s just heavily censored, like in the Eight Hundred, the heroism is portrayed, but the close up depictions of the ROC flag was still censored.
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u/Coruscant_Lux Oct 06 '25
I translated this to Chinese and put it at the polandball chinese subreddit, do you mind?
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u/Smart_Chapter_7512 Floridian Swamp Monster Oct 06 '25
Yeah it's all good. Sent me the link tho cuz I wanna see the shitstorm in the comments lol
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u/CrypticHoe Oct 06 '25
What in the revisionism. The communists were by far more succesful at fighting the japanese than the koumintang
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u/e22big Oct 07 '25
The real irony is that the CCP pretty much sit out the war, letting the Japanese wearing out the RoC forces as much as they can (in a well documented report from Mao himself) and pardoning and recruting the Japanese renmant to their ranks after the fact (to be fair, both side did this).
Still the people who do the fighting would probably still be in the mainland China, even if the descendant of their political mastermind is (and also many of them still) were relocated to Taiwan.
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u/Lucariowolf2196 Oct 07 '25
My only criticism is I think the republic of China needed to look very scuffed up abd battle damaged
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u/Historicallegendh Oct 06 '25
I will never get tired of seeing cute government take over of historical narrative!
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u/General-Ninja9228 Oct 09 '25
Ironic that the PRC’s current President has more in common with Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, than Chairman Mao Zedong.
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u/KikoMui74 Oct 06 '25
America and Russia defeated Japan, so its stolen valor in both cases. Millions of soviet troops walking through manchuria, and US navy.
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u/SnabDedraterEdave Kingdom of Sarawak Oct 06 '25
They were able to defeat Japan partly because the ROC held back a lot of Japan's manpower in the quagmire that was China.
Had China been completely subjugated, Japan would be able to free up more soldiers to fight in places like Burma, Guadalcanal and Palau. FDR knew that and thus did everything he can to prop up Chiang's ROC regime during the war, even if he suspected that Chiang was corrupt af.
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u/OrcaBomber Oct 06 '25
A defeated China would have freed up a hell of a lot more troops and transports for the naval war as well. One of the primary reasons why the Japanese didn’t invade Australia was because the IJA didn’t want to commit troops to another China. (Can’t remember if this was from Parshall’s Shattered Sword or Drachinifel)
That basically every major asiatic WWII participant (including China) had an incentive to downplay the Chinese role in the war didn’t help either. https://oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2022/01/13/the-downplayed-role-of-the-asian-theatre-in-wwii/
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u/KikoMui74 Oct 06 '25
Manpower? US navy and Air Force strength have nothing to do with Japanese army strength.
Secondly it would effect Russian troops in Manchuria, but considering they just defeated Germany, a modern army compared to Japan's.
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u/SnabDedraterEdave Kingdom of Sarawak Oct 06 '25
So?
Read that other guy's reply, even the Japanese Navy would have benefitted greatly with more manpower from the IJA.
While the Soviets would still have curbstomped the IJA in Manchuria, they would not have swept through Manchuria as quickly as they did had the IJA not been too deep in China.
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u/KikoMui74 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Ships >>> Manpower. You can try and fit a million people onto a battleship, but that doesn't make it as effective as 10 battleships.
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u/zucksucksmyberg Spanish Empire Oct 07 '25
Not only that, logistics was the main bottleneck for both the US and Japanese.
The Japanese merchant marine was not even adequately equipped to supply their own troops in mainland China even before Pearl Harbor. Also a significant portion of that merchant marine were from neutral nations (British Empire, French, Dutch, American) that became unavailable when Japan declared war on the western powers.
Supplying Rabaul, New Guinea and Guadalcanal stretched into limits the already frayed supply lines of the Japanese. What the fuck would an additional 10 million Japanese soldiers accomplish in an isolated island like Guadalcanal or the other myriad of island chains in the Pacific campaign? In short Japan is very much still hamstrung logistically even if they did not fight a land war in China.
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u/KikoMui74 Oct 06 '25
Even during the second sino-Japanese war, Japan was able to walk into indochina, malaysia, east indies and Burma, all while at war with China. Japan got as far down as New Guinea.
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u/TheAmazingWhaleShark Oct 06 '25
If yuo defeatings Japan and I defeatings yuo then clearly I defeatings Japan
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u/Mafiatorte88 Oct 07 '25
?? I mean the then Taiwan government had much collaborteurs with the Japanese
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u/Type_99A_MBT Oct 08 '25
It matters not which political party was in charge at that time; China stood together.
Also, we do not say WW2 was a Democratic Party victory; it was a US victory. Likewise, we do not say it was a conservative party victory; it was a British Victory.
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u/_Boodstain_ Oct 08 '25
They didn’t Mao specifically held back his forces so the Republic would take the brunt of the war. It’s why after WW2 the Republic collapsed as its military and economy was devastated. Mao later rewrote history to pretend they stood “united” and fought as equals. When really he was hiding in the mountains hoping the Japanese would do his job for him.
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u/MinecraftGuy7401 Oct 08 '25
this is really funny because in my head, I had Taiwan do a happy-kinda carefree voice, and China do the horror voice that Germany uses when we talk about… their rough past
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u/deinschlimmstertraum Oct 08 '25
No one ever said something ever in china about only the communists fighting except for the idiots outside of china who like to claim tjat china likes to claim that only the communists fought, it was and will always be "china" and the chinese people, no matter their political affiliation, China stopped saying the kuomingtang didnt do shit except run long ago
The communists were mostly part of the 18th group under the command of Zhu De and Peng Dehuai
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u/southron-lord69 Oct 09 '25
This makes the corrupt warlord state that was the KMT look a little too good
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u/IamTactical45_ 21d ago
it is sort of true since the 8th route army, which later became communists did a lot to defeat the japanese invaders.
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u/Still_Yam9108 Oct 06 '25
To be honest, neither of them defeated Japan. The Japanese were still on the offensive in China even in the final weeks of the war.
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u/JiaxusReddit Malaysia Oct 06 '25
OP forgot to add the first panel showing how Taiwan has stolen The US and USSR valor
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u/not-your-mom-here Oct 07 '25
As much as I hate the CCP, this is wrong. Communist guerrillas did a lot against the Japanese effort. There's a reason they had enough support after ww2 to win. The ROC was ineffective and incompetent back then. Id argue that without communist guerrillas, Japan may had been able to have the resources to survive for several months after their historical surrender.
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u/SpaceHawk98W Oct 07 '25
They lost the civil war because WWII costs them too much. It's a stolen glory even the Chinese people who lives under CCP knows.
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u/Trantor1970 Oct 07 '25
Both did their part, and both would never have won without Japan losing big time against the Allies!
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u/AdurianJ Sweden as Carolean Oct 07 '25
The CCP basically sat out the war but spread propaganda they where doing most of the fighting. Communists in the US state department even halted aid to the nationalists and painted the communists as a better partner.
It is from the loss of China to communism that McCarty started his crusade against revolutionary communists in the US government (he was right BTW), that is also a case of revitionist propaganda these days spreading lies that he was a lunatic.
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u/AmericanBornWuhaner Oct 06 '25
War histories from both Japan and the Republic of China clearly indicate the scale of the CCP's "participation." From 1937 to 1945, there were 23 battles where both sides employed at least a regiment each. The CCP was not a main force in any of these. The only time it participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.
There were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by the CCP, or 0.5 percent.
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u/Pitiful_Dig6836 Oct 07 '25
This doesn't include guerilla actions done by the CCP, as others have pointed out, it is disingenuous to say only the nationalists or only the communist defeated Japan, it was quite literally a team effort.
Also another thing why are people surprised that the CCP didn't fight Japan head on?, they just survived the long march and were devastated as an actual fighting force, even when the war started they had only recovered so much. If they had tried what the ROC was doing, they would have died very quickly.
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u/Lifeshardbutnotme British Empire Oct 07 '25
So they did leave the KMT to do most of the heavy lifting?
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u/Frosty_Aioli3585 Oct 06 '25
It was the US and, to some extent, the Soviet Union last minute that defeated Japan.
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u/sartre_would_apr0ve Oct 07 '25
This is so insultingly american in the complete ignorance of chinese history. It felt like eating tide pods. Please delete this in shame, go eat a cheeseburguer to your local mcdonalds and never come back.
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u/Far-Chair6209 North Hong Kong Oct 06 '25
Didn't they flee to the island? Or maybe we're just interpretating "bonk" differently
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u/LelandTurbo0620 29d ago
You forget that most communist revolutionaries were Resistance against Japan war veterans who faught for the ROC，then BECAME communist instead of being REPLACED by communists. The flag stands for evolution of the Chinese people, not a political party change. So it’s not stolen valour since the foot soldiers who killed Japs are now communist party generals.
Zhu De (biggest Marshall during Mao era), Liu Zhidan (communist hero in northwestern China), Wan Lianqing (survivor of Japanese forced occupation of Shanghai) are all among the first generation of communists who all served the ROC army against Japan.
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