This year marks the 91st anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931-1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25-30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, many people in the world have no knowledge of what happened. Furthermore, many people and their governments who were involved have been trying to deny what happened and trying to rewrite history. We have almost passed the time when all the survivors of those atrocities are all gone from this world. Fortunately, there are people of different nationalities around the world who have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from that part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated anywhere else in this world.
Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. These two remarkable people are Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan. This article “10,000 Cries for Justice and Speaking for the Voiceless” is about Tong Zeng. [1] The other article “A Conversation with Tamaki Matsuoka: ‘The Conscience of Japan’” is about Tamaki Matsuoka, and was posted in the June 2022 issue of this website. [2] Read More »
Perspective on U.S.-China Relationship – War or Peace
Recent developments on the relationship between the U.S. and China have led to an extremely strained relationship between the two countries leading to a critical cross-road: war or peace. This is not just any war, but a large-scale war, perhaps a world war involving most countries and possibly the use of nuclear weapons.
For a while, I thought that relationship cannot keep on getting worse because it is not good for the U.S., not good for China, and also not good for the whole world. [1] But that relationship has kept on getting worse. [2][3] We need to understand the real conflict between the U.S. and China, and what can be done to address the problem.
This is the subject of this article. We will discuss the critical conflict between U.S. and China, why that conflict is leading to a path of war, and how that path can and must be altered.
We will also discuss the impact of this relationship on Chinese Americans. We will discuss, especially the views of second-generation/third-generation Chinese Americans, and more generally speaking on the view of the people of the world.
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