Victory in the World Anti-Fascist War, 80 Years On
To mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Qiao Collective is pleased to publish transcripts from two recent interventions into the roiling debate over its historical legacy. Together, these pieces invoke the defeat of Japanese imperialism not as a static historical event, but as a touchstone of anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation that can and must be reinvigorated today.
Editor’s Introduction
On September 3, 2025, China marks the 80th anniversary of its victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Often reduced in Western narratives to a secondary theater of World War II, China played a central role in the defeat of fascism. An estimated 20 to 35 million Chinese people gave their lives in this titanic struggle for national liberation, a toll equalled in absolute terms only by the Soviet Union’s losses in its Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, and in relative terms by the sacrifices of other Asian nations resisting Japanese occupation.
The centerpiece of this year’s commemoration is a military parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, bringing together heads of state and government from 26 countries including most of China’s Eurasian neighbors. While headlines have focused on the top billing accorded to Russia and the DPRK, equally notable is the glaring absence of any official delegates from the Western Allies of WWII. Under pressure from the largely unreformed and unrepentant Japanese government, the West’s snubbing of China’s commemoration reflects a memory culture more fractured along the lines of the New Cold War than ever before. China’s commemoration, which by no coincidence follows the largest-ever summit of the multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organization, has itself become a flashpoint of the New Cold War as US media now accuses China of “revisionism” for its recentering of anti-imperialist struggle in Asia as a pillar of fascism’s defeat.
This polarization was already well in motion during the 70th anniversary parade in 2015 and has only deepened since then (as we noted in our own 75th anniversary remembrance in 2020). In Europe, the revisionist narrative equates fascism with communism, rehabilitating Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators and their modern-day heirs as the vanguard of Western civilization against an “Asiatic” Russia. It also severs the Nazi Holocaust from the history of Western colonial genocides, as its current Zionist iteration proceeds in Gaza with full support from both Germany and the other NATO countries that take undue credit for the Nazi defeat in WWII.
In East Asia, of course, the ink was barely dry on Japan’s Instrument of Surrender when the United States took its place as imperial hegemon. Nonetheless, the legacy of its wartime atrocities beset US strategic planning with uneasy contradictions throughout the Cold War. In Japan itself, occupation forces gladly rehabilitated the most monstrous and unrepentant war criminals in order to build it up as an anticommunist outpost of US power. But in two of the nations that had suffered the most under Japan’s colonial rule, shared memories of the liberation struggle stubbornly bridged the political divides violently imposed by US imperialism: uniting Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.
Today, the unifying history of shared struggle against Japanese occupation is breaking down under an unprecedented ideological offensive by the US and its proxies, even as their hegemony wanes globally. In South Korea the far-right regime of Yoon Suk-yeol made humiliating concessions to Japan on war reparations in order to facilitate a trilateral alliance with the US directed squarely against China. While Yoon’s December 2024 coup attempt brought that particular regime to an untimely end, it finds an ideological echo in Taiwan’s current separatist leadership. Under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan has banned serving officials from attending the Beijing parade and strongly discouraged war veterans from joining their former comrades in remembrance, all while diminishing both Japanese atrocities and the Communist Party’s outsize role in ending them.
To mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat, Qiao Collective is pleased to publish transcripts from two recent interventions into this roiling debate over its historical legacy. The first was delivered by Zang Ruxing (臧汝興) of the Labor Party of Taiwan at a conference hosted in late July 2025 by Okinawa-based anti-militarist organization ZENKO (National Assembly for Peace and Democracy). The second is from a speech by one of our members, Charles Xu, at a Los Angeles rally organized by anti-imperialist Korean diaspora organization Nodutdol to commemorate Korea’s Liberation Day. Together, these pieces invoke the defeat of Japanese imperialism not as a static historical event, but as a touchstone of anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation that can and must be reinvigorated today.
Report Manuscript at ZENKO Sagamihara 2025
臧汝興 (Zang Ruxing), Labor Party of Taiwan
Dear comrades, greetings!
We progressives have long emphasized the importance of international solidarity, especially when it comes to the issue of anti-war struggle. But never before have we felt the urgency of international anti-war solidarity so acutely. The reason is that we are witnessing East Asian powers rushing to prepare for war under the command of the United States—most notably Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
The U.S. regards us as its unsinkable aircraft carriers, deploying military forces and infrastructure wherever it sees fit to serve its own interests.
From the perspective of the people of East Asia, it is as if we are all on a small ship navigating treacherous waves stirred up by the United States. Therefore, we must find a common direction through exchange and understanding, and work together to overcome this crisis. This is one of the key reasons why international people’s solidarity against imperialism and war is so important.
The far-right forces in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan are also strengthening their own forms of solidarity. The far-right in South Korea continuously seeks to deepen military cooperation with Japan and is obsessed with glorifying Japan’s colonial invasions of the past. Needless to say, Taiwan's ruling far-right Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is no exception. They are fervent admirers of Shinzo Abe. After his death, parks and statues were erected in his honor in Kaohsiung, the DPP's stronghold.
Next to Abe’s statue stands a proudly displayed model warship—an offering from the DPP. Many of you may not be familiar with this ship. It is the "Yomogi No. 38 Patrol Boat", a Japanese vessel which was sunk by the U.S. military near Taiwan at the end of 1944. All 145 crew members aboard perished, and their memorial tablets are now enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. DPP supporters have held memorial ceremonies for them. The military police seen at the site are not real soldiers but DPP supporters dressed up in military uniforms.
Yoon Suk-yeol, the far-right president of South Korea, has also maintained close ties with Taiwan’s far-right DPP government. Recently, it was revealed through investigation that just one week before declaring martial law last year, Yoon secretly dispatched his Intelligence Commander, Moon Sang-ho, to Taiwan, requesting that the DPP issue a statement of support after martial law was declared in South Korea. And indeed, immediately after the declaration on December 3, the DPP posted a statement of support.
In South Korea, an investigation is underway into the main culprits and accomplices of the internal conflict under martial law. But let us be clear: the DPP was Yoon's accomplice abroad.
Last month in Taipei, a war game simulation was held involving 13 Taiwanese generals and 4 retired generals from Japan and the United States, simulating a defense scenario for the Taiwan Strait. Couldn’t this too be seen as their own version of “international solidarity”?
Among the participants were Shigeru Iwasaki, former Chief of the Joint Staff, and Tomohisa Takei, former Chief of Staff of the Maritime Self-Defense Force. Because cross-strait relations are a domestic issue for China, in order to avoid openly interfering in China's internal affairs, all foreign participants in this war game were retired officers.
In recent years, as tensions have grown in the Taiwan Strait, such war games have been conducted with increasing frequency. In the latest simulation, the scenario involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) occupying offshore Taiwanese islands in 2030, surrounding the main island, and launching an amphibious assault.
Japan’s simulated actions included: raising the combat readiness level, requesting an emergency budget from the National Diet, recalling its ambassador to China, defending U.S. bases in Japan under the Self Defense Forces law, initiating joint Japan-U.S. operational plans, and dispatching escort ships to protect Japanese vessels. Notably, no combat troops were directly deployed.
In response, Taiwanese separatist forces and media voiced strong dissatisfaction—but not toward Japan. Rather, they criticized Taiwanese experts who participated in the simulation for failing to launch a preemptive strike when the PLA came within nine nautical miles. They argued that only by provoking China could Japan be given a pretext to intervene.
In that regard, they were correct on just one point: Japan has no valid pretext to intervene.
From July 9 to 18, Taiwan conducted its first-ever military drill simulating combat in urban areas. The nine-night, ten-day exercise was also unprecedented in length and marked the largest-ever mobilization of reservists.
This was carried out at the request of the United States, who also supervised Taiwan's preparedness. Photos from the exercises showed U.S. military personnel in civilian clothes, hiding their identity.
In the drill, retired U.S. General Robert Abrams, a former U.S. Forces Korea Commander, served as an advisor to Taiwan's Chief of the General Staff. This is seen as preparatory work for the "One Theater" concept proposed by Japan in March—an attempt to draw even the U.S.-South Korea alliance into a war in the Taiwan Strait.
The inclusion of urban warfare in the exercise was also a U.S. directive. During the exercise, no evacuation of civilians was conducted. Considering Taiwan's high population density, such evacuation would likely be impossible. The war that the U.S. is preparing Taiwan for is one in which the people themselves will be used as human shields.
Taiwanese separatists love to say: “A Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency.” But we absolutely reject this notion.
The U.S. and separatists continue to push us toward a terrifying “Taiwan emergency.” But we firmly believe that cross-strait relations can and must be resolved peacefully through exchange and mutual understanding.
This is not just about the Taiwan issue—it applies equally to peace across East Asia as a whole.
With that, I conclude my report. Thank you very much for your attention.
National Liberation Day: 80 Years of Occupation, 80 Years of Resistance
Charles Xu, Qiao Collective
It's good to be with you everyone. My name is Charles and I'm a member of Qiao Collective, an anti-imperialist diaspora Chinese media collective and a proud member of the US Out of Korea coalition.
Eighty years ago to the day, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers. They told us this surrender would be unconditional and absolute. But everything about the official ceremony gave the game away. It took place on a US Navy ship. Seven of the nine signatories were white colonial powers. China, to be sure, was represented by the comprador regime of Chiang Kai-shek. But all the other peoples who paid the heaviest price to throw off the Japanese yoke – in Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and all throughout Asia – had no one there to accept the surrender but their own colonial overlords.
Because that was the real condition for Japan’s surrender. That it would transform overnight from America’s imperial rival to its forward base against Asian communism. That its former colonial subjects would gladly trade the Rising Sun for the Stars and Stripes. That we would accept puppet rulers who answered not to Tokyo but to Washington—often the very same puppets! Well, let me ask you: did we? Did we?
Of course not! And because our peoples issued such a resounding and unanimous “no,” imperialism drowned our homelands in blood. It forced our forebears to fight not just American occupiers, but millions of their own kin to liberate their own land. Yet against those seemingly insuperable odds, the allied peoples of China, Korea, and Vietnam dealt world-historic defeats to imperialism in 1949, 1953, 1954, and 1975.
But for both Korea and China the ultimate task of national liberation remains unfulfilled to this day. History has shown our peoples that we must cross that finish line hand in hand, or not at all. Because in 1895, what did Japan do after waging a war on Korean soil, over Korea’s sovereignty? It annexed Taiwan from China. And in 1950, on the very same day the US intervened with full force in Korea’s civil war, it sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait and froze China’s civil war indefinitely.
Then as now, US military planners look ravenously at maps of Asia and see both Taiwan and South Korea as “unsinkable aircraft carriers” anchoring the “first island chain” encircling China. Their client regimes have stood in unbroken anticommunist solidarity, not just with their imperial masters but with each other. Chiang Kai-shek offered Chinese troops to Syngman Rhee. Taiwan’s modern-day secessionist ruling party endorsed Yoon Suk-yeol’s coup last year. And as we gather now on the eve of Ulchi Freedom Shield, the US occupation is openly scheming to expand its mandate—and that of the 3.6 million Korean troops under its operational command—from the 38th parallel all the way to the Taiwan Strait.
Let me conclude by quoting a speech by Chinese diplomat Wu Xiuquan at the UN in November 1950, after his country entered the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. “American imperialism,” he said, “by its aggression against Korea and Taiwan … is now following the old track of aggression against China and Asia on which Japanese imperialism set forth in 1894-95, only hoping to proceed with greater speed. But after all, 1950 is not 1895; the times have changed, and so have the circumstances.”
To that I would add: 2025 is not 1950 either. The desperately poor, war-ravaged nations that together faced down nuclear annihilation then are now prosperous nuclear powers themselves. But in both China and the DPRK, the historical memory of that victory is stronger now than it’s been in decades. War today wouldn’t just mean genocide for our homelands, as they’re rehearsing right now in Gaza. It would mean suicide for the aggressors, right here on their own stolen land. And that’s why we in the diaspora, and all who stand with us—in Nodutdol, in Qiao Collective, in all the organizations gathered here today—owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our billions of comrades and compatriots across the Pacific, and to our ancestors to finish the task they started 80 years ago: by destroying the US war machine before it destroys us all.
