Friday, May 7, 2010

Mao helped to save Australia during WW2

We Australians view China not from a neo-Cold War perspective but as neighbours. It was Australia that opened the way for Kissinger and Nixon to visit Mao. It was Mao who helped to save Australia during WW2. My postgraduate thesis [written during the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution in 1968] asserts that Mao and the 8th Route Army and the New 4th Army kept the Japanese forces tied to the north of China instead of moving into South East Asia and thence onto Australia where Japan's war aims included capturing Australia's great mineral wealth. It was, in my opinion, a debt that has never been acknowledged. Although it was never intentional, Mao's great spirit imbued the Chinese guerrilla forces with enormous courage that enabled China to defeat Japan's imperialist aggression in WW2.
Thus, we Australians can be thankful to China. Our own population is served by almost a million Chinese Australians. We benefit from being a friend of China.


China Daily
8 May 2010

No comments: