The Rape of Nanking and its effects on Sino-Japanese relations.

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INTRODUCTION

In the past few centuries, there were many effective foreign countries which have left their marks in the long Chinese history. In Nanking (Nanjing) one can find many foreign influences.

This Essay will describe what happened in Nanking (Nanjing) in 1937 and how Japan and a group of Western foreigners influenced this Area, the thoughts of the people in China and the Sino-Japanese relationship.

MAINPART

During the Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7th, 1937 – September 9th, 1945), the imperial Japanese troops marched Nanking (now Nanjing) on December 13th, 1937. This was the beginning of the nowadays known “Nanking Massacre”, one can also find it under the names “Nanking Atrocity” and “Rape of Nanking”. When the Japanese troops entered the city, they left a path of destruction: they killed Chinese soldiers and civilians without reason, raped Chinese women, plundered and destroyed Chinese properties on a very large scale. The violence used against the Chinese and the degree of destruction was enormous, despite the efforts of some Japanese people to minimize this.

The Japanese occupation effected resulted in a big rising number of marriages and engagements compared to the previous years. That happened, because many parents with grown or engaged daughters wanted them to be married, before something bad happened to them.

By November, the majority of people, Chinese as well as foreigners, had already left the city.

The Fear of the Chinese people increased due to various things: the government was moved to Chongqing, the rumours about the Japanese cruelty the people heard of, the intimidating propaganda from the Japanese military and the large number of fleeing foreigners. Due to the dramatically decreasing population, there were only a few people seen on the streets and many houses were empty. Resulting out of that was that the many landlords stopped collecting rents from the tenants. Also, the goods exceeded demand, which means that the prices dropped which resulted in the closing down of many shops.

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The line of psychological defence of the Chinese people became fragile during the massacre. Is it clear to see in the following example: While Chinese prisoners were being lined up and about to be killed by the Japanese soldiers in a “killing competition”, one pregnant women began to fight for her life when a soldier tried to take her away to rape her. Although the Chinese largely outnumbered the soldiers and could have easily overwhelmed them, nobody even tried to help the women, everybody just watched how she was killed on the spot. This example shows that the Chinese had no ...

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