ARTICLE AD BOX
It's hard to overstate how politically and historically tone-deaf Helen Clark & John Key are for showing up at a Chinese Communist Party "victory" party celebrating the end of the Second World War.
Politically tone-deaf for all the many reasons rolled out by mainstream commentators: being responsible for cementing New Zealand's free-trade deal with China (for which much credit to both) doesn't require attending the biggest Asian military parade since the Japanese army rolled into Manchuria.
Far from any credit going to Mao Zedong's Communist Party for resisting that invasion, it was instead the CCP's salvation. It gave them their best chance of survival, which they grabbed with both hands.
Far from fighting a patriotic war, Mao's rabble instead withdrew into Yenan, coming back from near-extinction far from the war zone while lighting joss sticks and praying to Marx for the destruction of Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army at the hands of the Japanese.
Because it was Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army that was forced to fight the Japanese invasion, while Mao's forces largely sat on their hands—keeping their powder dry ready for the civil war they started after the Japanese surrender and the exhaustion of Chiang Kai-Shek's army.
After resting up for several years while building its materiel and men, on the very day following Japanese surrender in China Mao's party headquarters issued orders to advance — taking over the country from north to south, finally seizing full control in 1949. (You can read all about the sorry tale in Anthony Kubek's brilliant How the Far East Was Lost.)
That neither Helen Clark nor John Key appeared to know anything about that history says very little for either, but their attendance at the revisionist parade would bring a quiet chuckle to Chinese organisers delivering the Big Lie to an international audience.
It would be even worse if Clark or Key did know the real history. That would be worse than a disgrace. It would be damning.
English (US) ·