China continues to practice the Goebbels-style tactic that “a lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” Today’s Sankei column exposes Beijing’s persistent historical falsifications: claims that China and the U.S. jointly won WWII, portrayals of Japan as reviving militarism, and fabricated narratives in films such as “731” and “The Cairo Declaration,” which even inserts Mao Zedong into events he never attended. The column also highlights China’s false insistence that it was a founding member of the United Nations, despite the PRC being established four years after the UN’s founding and joining only in 1971. Finally, it warns of the alarming domestic forces in Japan that assist or echo Chinese propaganda. A must-read for audiences worldwide.

There is a famous line attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi German propaganda minister: “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.”
It means that even a falsehood can be believed as fact by many people if it is repeated endlessly.
In the international community, it may well be China that is putting this into practice.
▼The Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, stated in its international commentary on the 27th that the United States and China both made great sacrifices to win World War II, and argued that they share a “common responsibility” to block any scheme “to revive Japanese militarism.”
Wang Yi, Politburo member and foreign minister, made similar claims at an international conference.
▼However, it is China that hides its territorial ambitions, repeatedly intrudes into the territories and territorial waters of neighboring countries, and continues military intimidation—the very behavior of a militaristic state.
China behaves as if it fought shoulder to shoulder with the United States against Japan, but in reality the main force resisting Japan on the Chinese mainland was Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party.
The Communist forces primarily fought guerrilla warfare only in remote border regions.
▼This year marks 80 years since the war, and China released a film in September titled “731,” depicting the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731, but it was harshly criticized for scenes that could never have happened in reality.
Likewise, the film “The Cairo Declaration,” produced ten years ago for the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, was itself historical revisionism.
Mao Zedong—who did not even attend the 1943 Cairo Conference—appeared as though he were its central figure.
▼China frequently emphasizes that it is a founding member of the United Nations, but the founding of the People’s Republic of China was in October 1949, four years after the UN’s establishment.
China’s admission to the UN, replacing Taiwan, occurred more than twenty years later in October 1971.
What more needs to be said?
▼Given this record, the domestic forces in Japan that echo or actively assist China’s baseless accusations and propaganda are, by now, beyond redemption.