Author: Xusheng source: Xusheng (official account id:lxlong20) has been reproduced with authorization
After Abe’s assassination, there was a fierce collision between different views in China’s public opinion circles.
But I think one view is always correct, that is, China should never slack off and never relax its vigilance against Japan. In view of this idea, I decided to write this article to sort out the context of Japan’s ambition towards China.
Japan’s innate geographical environment is very poor: a barren island country in the Pacific Ocean.
However, the harsh innate environment has given birth to the Japanese sense of crisis, which makes them forge ahead. Therefore, whether in the battlefield or in the shopping mall, the Japanese performed well.
The biggest feature of the Japanese is that they are good at learning, and they will always learn from the boss of the global village. Japan has never been number one in the world, but it has never been far from being number one. The history of Japan is a history of learning:
Studying China for nearly 2000 years: learning Neo Confucianism in song and Ming Dynasties from hundreds of scholars, and fighting against teachers in the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895;
Studied Europe for nearly a hundred years: from the Meiji Restoration, he soon achieved great success, and attacked his teachers in World War II;
From learning from the United States after World War II to now, the day when American hegemony declines may be the time for Japan to strike back.
The relationship between China and Japan is very special: Japan was once the most diligent student behind the Chinese Empire, and insisted on studying hard and making progress every day for a thousand years. Japan was once the terminator of the Chinese Empire, which wiped out the life of China.
For thousands of years, Japan’s plot against China has roughly four dimensions:
Dimension 1 cultural scheme
In yesterday’s article, I said the difference between China and Japan.
China is a backbone civilized country and the main body of Chinese civilization.
Japan is a branch of the Chinese civilization.
The ultimate goal of a branch country is to become a trunk civilized country, or to replace it with a trunk civilized country.
Japan is an island country, so it doesn’t matter what it wants; It is unrealistic to expect them to create civilization by themselves. Japan’s civilization gene comes from China, so it was very attracted to the Chinese Empire at first.
When China and Japan first came into contact, Japan had just evolved into the paternal age and was in a state of extreme backwardness and barbarism. At that time, the Chinese Empire had evolved into the Han Dynasty, had been separated from politics and religion, strengthened centralization, and was ambitiously opening up territory and walking at the forefront of the history of civilization. Japanese newcomers are like Grandma Liu who first entered the Grand View Garden, marveling at the wealth and civilized order of the Han Empire.
Japan from China:
Shanzhai a series of daily necessities (such as Japanese mirrors), architectural art (such as royal palaces and Taoist temples), and so on;
The introduction of the Confucian system, as well as its supporting clothing, food, housing, transportation and so on;
Absorbed the concepts of “Tao” and “Buddha”, etc.
Japan has become a small melting pot, moving everything from the Chinese Empire to the past and inheriting it well.
However, it is only the first step to digest and absorb the civilization essence of the trunk type countries if the branch type civilized countries want to replace the trunk type civilized countries.
The second step is more vicious, which is to find ways to destroy the cultural confidence of the backbone civilized countries.
In modern history, Japan made a set of crooked theories at the cultural level in order to provide a theoretical basis for the invasion of China.
First of all, Japanese scholars throw out the “Sino Japanese cultural integration theory”, saying that Chinese and Japanese cultures come from the same vein—— There is no problem in itself.
Secondly, it concocted “there is no China after the cliff mountain, and there is no China after the death of the Ming Dynasty.” The main idea is that China’s orthodox Chinese civilization has long been destroyed by the northern nomads and no longer exists—— This is the most heinous.
According to this argument of the Japanese cultural circles, since “Chinese and Japanese cultures are integrated, and China’s traditional civilization has been destroyed”, then only Japan is left with the orthodox Chinese civilization.
This is a typical cultural phagocytosis in Japan, which has confused many Chinese people. In the circle of public opinion in China, rootless people often take the view that “there is no China after the cliff mountains, and there is no China after the death of the Ming Dynasty” (completely forgetting the reality that the Chinese civilization originally had two veins of farming and nomadism), which is particularly serious in the elite Japanese group.
Today, with the rapid growth of China’s comprehensive national strength and the steady progress of national rejuvenation, Japan’s cultural phagocytosis still has such an impact. When China was weak before, Japan’s influence was deeper. At the beginning, the reason why Japan could recruit so many Imperial troops during its invasion of China was due to the cultural phagocytosis.
Dimension 2 political plot
Japan’s cultural phagocytosis of China mainly serves its political plot.
The biggest political plot in Japanese history is the mainland policy. Due to Japan’s congenital disadvantages, it has unlimited yearning for the East Asian continent. After learning about the Chinese Empire for a period of time, I want to try my hand when I have made little achievements.
In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Japan took advantage of the chaos in Korea and used the excuse of supporting Baekje to send troops to the Korean Peninsula. But the army of the Tang Dynasty was not vegetarian. Veteran Liu Rengui beat the Japanese army flat on water and land.
After being beaten, Japan became very modest and sent people to the Tang Dynasty to learn advanced culture and science. Until now, a group of heroes from the early Tang Dynasty are still enshrined as saints on the inner wall of the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan.
Eight hundred years later, a little madman named Hideyoshi Toyotomi ended Japan’s “Warring States period” after a fight on the battlefield and a deception and wrangling outside the battlefield, just as Qinshihuang ended China’s Warring States period. However, compared with the Warring States period of China, Japan can only be regarded as a fake version at most. Compared with Qin Shihuang, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is also a fake version.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi is small, but ambitious. He wants to lead Japan to conquer East Asia. His ambition is to invade North Korea, forge ahead in Pingjin, occupy North China, and establish a super empire in East Asia.
However, the Japanese army was beaten by the Ming army, and eventually Toyotomi Hideyoshi also ended up dead. But his ambition further stimulated Japan’s desire to conquer the East Asian continent.
——Before Toyotomi Hideyoshi advocated the mainland policy, Japan only yearned for the mainland; After that, Japan began to desire to conquer the mainland. This is a qualitative change.
After Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death, Japan’s mainland policy was also thrown into a pile of old paper. Because most Japanese don’t believe they can conquer China. However, after the black boat incident in 1853, Japan quickly became a semi colony of Western powers, which greatly stimulated some crazy Japanese scholars, such as matsuyoshida, the godfather of the Meiji Restoration.
You may wonder that the Meiji Restoration is the Japanese version of the Westernization Movement, which needs to learn from foreigners to control them; In essence, it is also the Japanese version of national salvation.
In the thinking of Chinese people, saving the nation from subjugation and striving for survival is to work hard, reform and learn from others’ strengths.
But in Japan’s thinking of saving the nation from subjugation and striving for survival, in addition to those of China, there is also external expansion.
The elites of Japan’s Meiji restoration carried out thorough reform internally and firm expansion externally when saving the nation from subjugation and striving for survival. The simplest example is the annexation of Ryukyu by Japan before the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895.
Therefore, Japan’s so-called Meiji Restoration, at the political level, is to serve the mainland policy, that is, to bet on national luck and compete with China. We Chinese speak of Meiji Restoration only from the perspective of saving the nation from subjugation and ensuring survival, which is obviously very one-sided.
So after Japan won the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895, it immediately took away strategic places such as the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. Look at the first island chain established by the United States, half of which is the territory taken by Japan after the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895. Of course, Japan also wanted Liaodong Peninsula, but it failed to swallow it due to the intervention of tsarist Russia and Germany.
After the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan did not immediately launch the war of aggression against China, because it did not have that ability at that time.
Therefore, after the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan changed its political face again, continued to promote the goodwill between China and Japan, and won the favor of many Chinese people. When the Eight Power Allied forces invaded China, the Japanese army showed relative restraint and won a lot of favor.
At that time, Japan’s political penetration into China was also relatively hidden, indirectly through supporting Warlords (Feng and WAN).
So at the beginning of the 20th century, many Chinese youth went to Japan to study and look for ways to save the country. In particular, the revolutionary elites of both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party have basically been to Japan to study. At that time, Japan’s political and cultural infiltration into China was very successful.
However, Japan’s hypocritical face has not been hidden for too long. With the outbreak of the world economic crisis in 1929, Japan finally showed its fangs. In 1931, it launched the September 18th Incident, occupied Northeast China, and opened the curtain of the war of aggression against China.
After seeing Japan’s political plot, the Chinese rose up and finally won the great victory of the Anti Japanese War through great sacrifice. Today, Chinese people should be vigilant and self-improvement, because that is the experience gained from the blood of our ancestors.
Dimension 3 Military plot
In all these dimensions, military plot seems relatively simple. But there are a few things that need to be understood.
1. China won the war of resistance against Japan, but did not completely and cleanly kill the Japanese army from the front battlefield like the United States and the Soviet Union; So that Japan has been unconvinced by China.
It is precisely because of this dissatisfaction that today’s Japan is not giving up in the Taiwan Strait, trying to follow the United States to do things in the Taiwan Strait.
At the beginning, China failed to clean up the Japanese army thoroughly, mainly due to its own reasons.
2. In the same civilization cycle, Japan cannot shake China.
During the period of agricultural civilization, the Japanese army was no match in either the Tang Dynasty or the Ming Dynasty. After China completes industrialization, Japan is unlikely to shake China.
The reason why the Japanese army caused so much damage to China in modern times is that Japan took the lead in industrial civilization through the Meiji Restoration, reduced the dimension of the army equipped with industrial civilization and attacked the Chinese Army supported by agricultural civilization. This is also the reason why China failed to completely clean up the Japanese army at the beginning.
3. If there is another military conflict between China and Japan, I believe the Japanese army will be cleaned up completely this time.
The Japanese army is that kind. If you don’t clean it up thoroughly, it will be very troublesome. If you clean it up thoroughly, it will become clever and quiet.
The Tang army cleaned up the Japanese army thoroughly and won about 800 years of purity for future generations.
The Ming army cleaned up the Japanese army thoroughly, winning about 500 years of purity for future generations.
The U.S. Army cleaned up the Japanese army thoroughly, and now it has become the big brother of the Japanese army.
The Soviet Army cleaned up the Japanese army thoroughly, and now Russia can also take advantage of Japan.
Japan now follows the United States in pretending to be powerful, just because it still needs the Chinese army to clean up the Japanese army thoroughly.
4. Although the war of resistance against Japan was not won easily, it also completely broke Japan’s mainland policy and frustrated Japan’s political plot against China for thousands of years. At present, Japan’s economic plot against China is mainly economic.
Dimension 4 economic scheme
The failure of World War II was a heavy blow to Japan.
However, Japan soon recovered its strength, which was rooted in the fact that Japan used the Korean War to achieve economic take-off and became the first Asian economy to take off.
As a result, Japan has become a world factory, and Japanese goods have flooded the entire global village.
However, Japan is not satisfied with producing goods, but also tries to export rules and become a global village chess player (according to the logic of the global village game, the chess player makes rules and the chess pieces accept rules).
When Japan began exporting rules, it encountered two headwinds.
One mallet is the Plaza Agreement of the United States. The strength of this agreement is that it has blocked Japan’s layout and development in the new economic field.
Among the major industries before the Plaza Agreement, Japan is very strong.
After the Plaza Agreement, in the new economic ecosystem based on the Internet, Japan, like European countries, has been reduced to a passive recipient.
Another boon is that China’s reform and opening up has become a stronger world factory, absorbing almost all industrial chains and becoming a manufacturing hub of the global village.
Japan’s ambition at the economic level is to become the leader in Asia and let Chinese manufacturing accept Japan’s standards. If Japan can realize its economic ambition, that is, to let China accept Japanese standards, it will also promote its national destiny to a higher level.
But the reality is that although Japan is very good in some high-end manufacturing fields, those are only partial. And neither China nor the United States can accept Japan’s business rules.
One of the most remarkable examples is new energy vehicles. Japan is betting on hydrogen and oxygen batteries to try to lead the field of new energy vehicles. However, both China and the United States have focused on lithium batteries.
The automotive sector can be said to be the most important pillar of the Japanese economy. If Japan fails to bet in the field of new energy vehicles and becomes a passive follower, it must be another heavy blow to Japan.
When Japan tries to formulate economic rules but fails, its economic plot against China will inevitably fail.
Summary
There is no doubt that Japan is an excellent nation, and they are especially good at learning.
They have never been the first in the world, but they are not far from the first in the world.
Whether it is the war machine driven by militarism in those days or the economic empire after World War II, Japan is almost on the top of the world.
The Japanese are paranoid, because they want to climb to the top of the world but can’t. They don’t have the magnanimity to reign in the world.
So there is a kind of sadness in the bottom of the Japanese heart, that kind of unwilling to desire the peak.
There is only a sigh at the end of the earth. This sigh echoes in Japanese literature, film and music. So the essence of Japan lies in this sad sigh melody.
