China’s push to register the Nanjing Incident as a UNESCO Memory of the World was not about preservation but about strengthening it as a diplomatic weapon against Japan.
This essay traces the political strategy through UNESCO procedures, Xi Jinping’s statements, and attempts to equate Nanjing with the Holocaust.

2016-10-09
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
However, there are limits to what can be done by the private sector.
So how did China act.
About a year earlier, China had proposed making the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall a World Cultural Heritage site and expanded the memorial threefold in order to meet the requirements.
This attempt was not approved, but last year December 13 was elevated to a national memorial day, clearly indicating a renewed and intensified effort.
Whether UNESCO accepts an application depends on an initial evaluation by a registration subcommittee that examines the historical materials and then forwards them to an International Advisory Committee consisting of fourteen members.
The International Advisory Committee conducts the final deliberation, and the decision is entrusted to the Director-General of UNESCO.
Last March, Xi Jinping met with Director-General Irina Bokova.
In April, Xi Jinping visited Germany and delivered a speech in which he referred to a massacre of 300,000 people.
The Diary of Anne Frank has already been registered as a Memory of the World, and Xi’s reference in Germany likely reflected an intention to place the Nanjing Incident alongside the Holocaust.
In the same month of April, he guided the Queen of Denmark through the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.
It was clearly evident that by securing registration, China sought to strengthen the issue as a diplomatic weapon against Japan.
In this way, there is a striking difference between the approaches taken by Japan and China.
Japanese who courageously pressed the issue.
As for whether Xi Jinping himself believes in the Nanjing Incident, the answer is no.
Xi Jinping did not study the Nanjing Incident either in middle school or at Tsinghua University.
China did not include it in textbooks until 1981, when Xi Jinping was twenty-eight years old.
It is unlikely that he believes in an incident that suddenly appeared in textbooks when he was already twenty-eight.
A second reason Xi Jinping would regard it as having not occurred is that party history, which Communist Party members are required to study—such as Hu Qiaomu’s Thirty Years of the Chinese Communist Party—does not describe the incident.
Would Xi Jinping regard something absent from party history as fact.
Third, Chinese senior officials have historically regarded the incident as having not occurred.
It is inconceivable that Xi Jinping alone would regard it as having occurred.