Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese surrender during World War II, known in China as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

As many as 22 million Chinese soldiers and civilians lost their lives in this struggle against fascism and imperialism.

China’s experience of Japanese imperialism has deeply shaped its history.

For instance, the post-WWI transfer of German concessions in Shandong to Japan showed the farce of the Western liberal order, spawning the May 4 Movement and the growth of anti-colonial Chinese thought.

However, Japan’s formal surrender did not mean the end of imperial aggression and occupation throughout Asia. The U.S. retained much of Imperial Japan’s political infrastructure to mold post-war Japan into a U.S. client state and Cold War regional hegemon.

As in Korea, Japan’s defeat marked the emergence of the U.S. as the main imperialist antagonist in China’s struggle for national liberation.

Tellingly, the US ordered Japanese soldiers to surrender only to imperialist-aligned KMT troops, despite the Red Army’s mass war efforts.

Immediately after Japan’s surrender, the U.S. sent 50,000 marines to occupy Northern China to ‘facilitate’ the removal of Japanese troops.

In fact, this occupation sent a clear signal to the CPC and the Chinese people: that peace was a condition of accepting U.S. supremacy.

The defeat of Imperial Japan did not spell the end of Japanese imperialism under new names. Japan remains a prime enforcer of U.S. imperial interests, leveraging sanctions against the DPRK and facilitating the occupation of Ryukyu as part of US “containment” of Asian communisms

Never forget that it was the Communist ranks of China and the Soviet Union that defeated fascism and imperialism!

This historical fact is erased by Western Cold War propaganda that sought to conflate Communism and fascism in the aftermath of WWII.