ExSE Commentary: Below is a translated feature from the Thursday, June 13 Southern Weekend, a Chinese newspaper known for its excellence in reporting and pushing the envelope on key social and political issues in China.
The article calls for the need to officially memorialize and add to the historical record the sacrifice of 100,000 fallen soldiers of the Chinese Expeditionary Force (CEF), one of two Chinese military excursions outside of sovereign Chinese territory sent to repel Japanese forces occupying Burma during World War II. But this is not a simple task for the PRC government who currently proclaims its military forces have never operated across borders; the fact that the CEF troops were later identified with the Nationalist army and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution only complicates the cause. The author cites the lack of Chinese government participation in recognizing its own history and respecting China’s war veterans through a comparison of Britain and Japan’s official treatment of soldiers killed in action and veterans still living.
In addition, the article stokes nationalist sentiments, by reminding the reader of China’s history of crushing Japanese aggression abroad (although the victory at the Battle of Myitkyina was a result of Sino-US military cooperation, a factor the article fails to mention). Lastly, this feature, which pits China as positive and contributory force in the creation of a modern Myanmar, is interestingly published at a tenuous time for China-Myanmar relations.
Photos, maps, and details on the CEF can be found here.
“Nowhere to Kowtow in Barren Fields: Chinese Citizens Erect Monuments to China’s WWII Expeditionary Forces in Burma. ” By Zeng Ming
During the 2013 Qingming Grave Sweeping Festival, 17 Chinese citizens arrived in the border town of Myitkyina, Burma. While walking under the war-torn clouds of the capital of the Kachin state, they stopped at a plot of barren farmland and laid chrysanthemums on the ground.
This movement called “Return to the Burmese Battlefield” is the first large scale non-government organized movement of its kind to memorialize the remains of the 100,000 fallen soldiers of the China Expeditionary Force (CEF). It was here that the CEF initiated the most intense battle of World War II outside of Chinese soil and achieved the first victory of Chinese expeditionary forces since the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895.
However, the historical record of this battle is dim and pallid. Standing on this desolate ground, they pay respect to too many things unknown and gauche that have sunken into the ground. They do not know for whom they cry, and they do not know the faces or names of those buried here.
In more than half a century the skeletons of 10,000 soldiers of the China expeditionary force have been brushed over by history, destroyed by human forces, and sent into oblivion in the forests of northern Burma. With the exception of the little that has sunken into the historical record, for their entire journey, the participants of this movement are shaken by a single fact: The British and Japanese have erected grand cemeteries to their fallen soldiers. Each of these soldiers has received the highest degree of respect, and even the names of war horses are carved in stone.
Presently the Burmese know more about the distant victories of colonials and invaders than they do of the CEF even though the latter made a great sacrifice for the sake of peace. This is a competition to reveal the true events of the last century that have since fallen silently off the historical record. This group of volunteers believes China cannot again be left out of the history of this battle. They have decided to do something – to erect a monument to the war of their fathers’ generation. Continue reading →
