September opened with remembrances of the 80th anniversary of the victory over Japan in World War II. True to form, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has frantically shoveled its triumphalist narrative onto a global audience—even though the state itself did not exist until several years after the war. Beijing held a bellicose parade showcasing its military and technological might (stealth jets, hypersonic missiles, undersea drones, high-powered lasers) while rolling out the red carpet for despots such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
In the Republic of China (ROC), the state that bore the brunt of the war effort against Japan’s brutal invasion and which persists in democratic Taiwan, the telling was very different. Taiwanese writers have critiqued Beijing’s retelling as an attempt to rewrite the past, erase the Nationalist forces that led China’s wartime resistance, and retroactively cement the place of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in that history. In Taipei in August, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te marked the end of the war in the Pacific by reminding all nations of how a rising tide of authoritarianism preceded World War II. Then, as Beijing’s military parade commenced on Sept. 3, he pointedly remarked that Taiwan “does not commemorate peace with the barrel of a gun.” Even U.S. President Donald Trump protested the omission of stalwart U.S. support for China during the yearslong conflict.
It would be a tragedy to forget the lessons from the first Chinese republic in its tenacious resistance against invading Japanese forces. The ROC’s wartime experience offers much to consider: the importance of truth and the danger of false state narratives; the courageous resistance of everyday people; and the value of an international system based on rules, rather than raw power.
Today, with the world embroiled in another bloody conflict, Russia’s war on Ukraine poses a useful moral test—one that China is failing. Beijing’s unwavering economic, political, and diplomatic backing of Moscow as it wages its illegal war all contravene the fundamental lessons borne out of the Chinese people’s valiant, painful, and ultimately successful struggle in World War II.
The Japanese empire began a campaign of encroachment into Chinese-held territory with a 1931 offensive in Manchuria—and as with Russia’s transgressions against Ukraine today, Tokyo used a flimsy security pretext to justify its incursion. Japan blamed a Sept. 18 railway bombing on the ROC government, an attack that, in reality, had been staged by Japanese officers. Citing the need to ensure security and protect its interests in the region, the Imperial Japanese Army overran Mukden (now Shenyang), a major city and railway junction.
Dubbed the Mukden Incident by the international press, this attack was only the tip of the spear: Within six months, Japanese forces had occupied all three of China’s northeastern provinces, to form a pliant puppet nation they labeled “Manchukuo.” The deposed Qing emperor was appointed its head of state. Following the attack on Mukden, China swiftly appealed to the League of Nations to intervene, but the hapless organization proved unable to halt the Japanese army’s advances. A 1932-33 League investigation found that Japan’s military actions could not be justified as “measures of self-defence” and recommended Japanese troops evacuate Manchuria. Tokyo flatly rejected these findings and chose instead to exit the League in 1933. This inability to hold Japan to account was later understood as emboldening fascists in Italy and Germany as well.
Fast forward to 2022: The New York Times described the situation just before Russia invaded Ukraine as “one of the world’s largest militaries launching an unprovoked ground invasion of a neighboring country … an expansion of regional dominance, either through annexation or the establishment of a puppet government.” It eerily parallels China’s World War II experience: As with Japan in Manchuria, Russian troops entered Ukraine’s Donbas region on a contrived pretext. Moscow then recognized breakaway republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, akin to a modern-day Manchukuo. (It has since fully annexed them.) Much like imperial Japan’s designs to establish an East Asian sphere of influence, Russia channels a sense of superiority and portrays its domination of regional neighbors as natural and inevitable. Putin seems to perceive that the mere existence of an independent-minded Ukraine on Russia’s border represents an existential threat that permits Moscow to attempt to extinguish the current democratic government in Kyiv altogether.
In the Sinophone world, the date Sept. 18, 1931, is seared into history as an illegal invasion, the “918 Incident.” Given this context, instead of blaming Ukraine and its international partners for so-called provocations, the government in Beijing today could choose to honor a history where Chinese statesmen roundly condemned naked aggression. It could also avoid parroting Russia’s claims that its “legitimate security interests” somehow justified an invasion.
Chatter in recent weeks has resurfaced the idea that Ukraine should trade its territory for peace. Yet throughout World War II and the Sino-Japanese war—also called the War of Resistance Against Japan—the ROC’s armed forces fought a yearslong series of pitched battles against the Japanese military and consequently bore most of the Chinese casualties in the conflict, a fact the CCP has never been eager to highlight. By strategically retreating from its capital in Nanking (Nanjing) to Chungking (Chongqing) in the southwest, Nationalist China traded space for time to marshal its forces, before regaining the advantage and rolling back Japanese occupiers to reclaim its rightful territory. As with Ukraine today, support from overseas allies was crucial to sustain this resistance.
The Chinese experience highlights how determination to protect national sovereignty, accompanied by solidarity from international allies, enables long-term resistance—and with the right causes and conditions, holds open the possibility of victory. But in the dark days of the early 1940s, should the Chinese republic simply have given up its territorial claims to accommodate an aggressive Japan?
Likewise, should Kyiv abandon Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson to their fate, as some parties have urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do, just to gain a temporary cease-fire? Outsiders forcing a settlement on Ukraine—on terms favorable to Russia or without Ukraine at the table—would be incompatible with the wartime lesson of resisting an unlawful invader and refusing to surrender. Only by persisting was the ROC able to broadly restore its sovereignty, push back the aggressor, and—in cooperation with its wartime allies—establish a more just and lasting peace.
Finally, as countries emerged from the devastating global conflict in 1945, they rallied around the need for a new multilateral order that could maintain international peace and security, suppress acts of aggression, and secure self-determination. Together, they forged a United Nations that recognized the sovereign equality of all nations, large and small, and promoted the pacific settlement of international disputes.
The ROC was a founding member of this new international organization, with Chinese diplomats crucial in its formulation. As one of the “Big Four” allies, it joined stage-setting talks at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in 1944 (ably represented by Ambassador V.K. Wellington Koo, who would later serve as a judge at The Hague). The next year, T.V. Soong led a vibrant Chinese delegation to the touchstone international conference in San Francisco, where China was one of four co-sponsoring governments. They joined hands with delegates from four dozen other nations to negotiate and sign the U.N. Charter.
Similarly, statesman P.C. Chang served as the influential vice chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, working alongside chair Eleanor Roosevelt and a diverse array of other experts to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In these pioneering efforts to build a different international order, Chinese perspectives—drawing not only on the nation’s immediate experience of war but its long cultural traditions, deeply held beliefs, and humanistic philosophies—meaningfully shaped these multicultural treaties and declarations. These fundamental texts can never be dismissed as merely “Western” constructs. Expounding genuinely universal principles, they have helped define eight decades of international relations and frame our modern conception of human rights.
Those historic contributions remain, even though the PRC took the “China” seat in the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council from the ROC (which had retreated to Taiwan) in 1971. The U.N. resolution that forced this change does not preclude Taiwan from meaningful participation at the world body, as legal scholars have explained in an influential report. Notably, senior U.S. officials and numerous legislative bodies around the world have pushed back on China’s distorted narrative that claims the contrary.
While the 51 founding members of the United Nations committed to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” affirm “fundamental human rights,” and ensure that “justice and respect for … international law” would endure, Putin’s use of military force to redefine Russia’s borders, seize territory from its neighbors, and commit atrocities against the people of Ukraine violates core tenets of the U.N. system.
Unfortunately, China’s ongoing aid to the Russian industrial war machine and its support for Putin’s position—including Chinese diplomats’ constant harping on “legitimate security concerns” as justification for Russia’s war of aggression—not only provide political cover to Moscow but undermine the U.N. Charter and the larger multilateral system of which a democratic China was once a primary author and the first signatory.
China announced President Xi Jinping’s new Global Governance Initiative during the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, shortly before the World War II commemoration. The initiative vapidly claims that China is committed to “international rule of law” and “multilateralism.” Yet so long as the CCP ignores the lessons of Chinese history, by backing Russia’s brutal war of aggression, Xi’s initiative will be seen for the cynical marketing ploy it truly is—touting U.N. vocabulary but with none of the body’s principles.
The government in Beijing should honor the wartime experience of the people of China and their first republic—and uplift that society’s postwar contributions to international peace—by reevaluating its errant approach to Russia’s war that further perpetuates the conflict. Any support for Russia’s war machine is fundamentally incompatible with the lessons illuminated by a Chinese wartime record of immense courage, determined idealism, and ultimately victory.