Just a brief description of a few noteworthy atrocities in recent Chinese history, which make Rape of Nanking look like a walk in the park.

Prologue:

The gullible westerner, so naive, so full of the milk of human-kindness, only knows Rape of Nanking.

He has no frame of reference to compare, evaluate, or even comprehend the level of cruelty and barbarism, no impression of of the inner heart of darkness that is China. His conscience, for better or for worse, is still a Victorian woman sitting in her boudoir; she lives in the most civilized, peaceful and safe world, isolated, sheltered, unseen; were she allowed to step out of her protected little world, and to be faced with the cruelty of the Far East, she would have gone insane.

The simple-minded westerner, only knows Hitler and the Holocaust. That was the impression I got when I was recommended to listen to a podcast made by some American guy on Genghis Khan, and where they talked about the wholesale slaughter of entire cities and towns and compared every event to the Holocaust. A thousand Holocaust a day. This is a Holocaust. That is a Holocaust. Holocaust this. Holocaust that. This guy is a Hitler. That guy is Hitler.

The naive westerner. In the entire podcast they made no less than 100 references to Hitler and the Holocaust. Do those cozened westerner not know that the wholesale slaughter of an entire population is just part and parcel of living outside of the coddled, cozy, civilized western world? Do they not know that genocide is the norm throughout all human existence?

Without further ado, let me describe to you, in simple and plain English, a few well known atrocities in Chinese history that is on a scale 100 times worse than Rape of Nanking.

1. Taiping Rebellion 太平天國運動

I put the Taiping Rebellion first simply because it is most well known to westerners and most well documented.

According to western scholars, at the time Taiping Rebellion occurred, China’s total population was 430 million. After 14 years when the rebellion was ultimately crushed, China’s total population dropped to 230 million. The death toll directly related to the rebellion is estimated to be between 20 to 30 million people, approximately 5 ~ 10% of the total Chinese population. The rest died mostly of famine, natural disasters, and war induced plagues.

In terms of sheer number, as you can already see, the Japanese was nowhere nearly as brutal as the Chinese themselves. Even by the most exaggerated statistics, at most the Japanese army only killed a total of 3 to 4 million Chinese during World War II, less than 1/10th of what the Chinese did to themselves during Taiping Rebellion, and not to account for the fact that most of the Chinese who were killed during World War II were killed by Chinese themselves in their own civil wars between the Communist, the Nationalist, and the various warlords.

As for the methods of killing, according to official records left by westerners, the Chinese were extremely artful in inventing the most cruel and unusual tortures. Lingchi (death by a thousand cuts), waist-chop, sandalwood death, etc. I won’t go into too much details but you are free to look up in the Reference section if you are interested. In comparison, the Japanese would be considered humane in merely forming beheading contests, since beheading is the least brutal methods of killing, at least according to what the Chinese were doing to themselves.

As a concrete example, an interesting account is that one of the founders of Taiping Rebellion was executed by the “brother of Jesus” during an internal cleansing within the Taiping organization. He received death by a thousand cuts and afterwards his sliced-up body parts, a few hundred tiny pieces of bones and meat, was hung on hooks outside the gate to the palace and there were tags next to the meat with the words “Northern Traitor Meat. Look, but do not touch.”

There are actually more eye witness accounts. Some are in Chinese, some are by western observers. Every ransack of every city during the Taiping Rebellions was literally 100 times worse than what the Japanese did during Nanking. Literally. You can do research on your own if you are so inclined and verify that I’m not lying to you.

2. Zhang Xianzhong 张献忠

Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man. Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill 天生萬物以養人 人無一善以報天 殺殺殺殺殺殺殺

Mr. Zhang is just one of the many psychopathic characters to have emerged during the transition period from Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty.

He is famous for having killed somewhere around 2 to 3 million people in Sichuan province of China, (which was more than 90 percent of the total population of Sichuan) and his atrocities is well recorded by two Portuguese missionaries who accompanied him during his reign of terror. In their diaries, which were written in Latin, and were not published to the outside world until 1910s, they recorded that Mr. Zhang killed at least a few dozen people everyday, and in fact, he made a sport out of inventing various methods to torture and kill people for fun. All the concubines in his palace were not allowed to wear anything below their waist, so that he could have access to their vaginas whenever he pleased. After having sex with his concubines, he had to carve a piece of flesh from them and eat it. Sometimes he also carved out female flesh and gave to his generals as rewards. In another instance, he cut off the feet of one thousand women, piled them in a large pile, burned it as a sacrifice to heaven for recovery from a sickness. In another instance, he had all the people gathered in a town square, confiscated all their belongings, such as earrings, jewelries and other valuables, and then told them that they would all be executed. A few people within the group shouted, “We are your citizens. We have been royal to you. Why are you going to kill us?” To which Zhang, mounted on his horse, shouted, “Because you have all sinned against Heaven. You have nothing good to recompense heaven. So I’m going to Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.” After he said that, he trotted through the crowd of people on his horse, sword slashing and roofs stampeding in a frenzy.

There are many more accounts of his atrocities which you can read about in the references if you are interested. The English translations do absolutely no justice to the level of horror that is in Chinese unfortunately. I wish Iris Chang were still alive and make juicy accounts for western audience as she did with Rape of Nanking.

What is especially interesting is his upbringing, which is not well known or, how should I put it, well-propagated: he was born to a peasant family. It is recorded that when he was young, he and his father went around the country selling jujube, a type of Chinese date, and when the donkey that carried the jujube passed by the gate of a wealthy upper class family, it took a big dump. The gate keepers came out, gave a round of drubbings to both Zhang and his dad. Not only that, but afterward, they were not allowed to go and were forced to eat the donkey’s dung. This happened to Zhang when he was a small child.

After he grew up Zhang worked briefly as a policeman, then joined the army for a brief period of time. And according to historical record, it was said that because the government of Ming was so corrupt that he never made a dime from his jobs. His salary was all confiscated by upper level officials. Even when he was a soldier, the government delayed payment to him to such an extent that he was not paid for over an entire year. And he witnessed first hand the Ming’s army pillaging and raping of towns and villages (which we can assume that he also participated) during their supposed campaigns to crush peasant rebellions. During the transition from Ming to Qing, there were non-stop peasant rebellions, in addition to the invasion of Qing army.

After his stint in the army, he went back to this hometown to become a supplier of arms to the government, making swords, battle axes, armors, etc. So a sort of independent contractor for the government, which sounds, at least to modern readers, like a very lucrative job. But the Ming government at the time was so broke that it even had difficulty paying the independent contractors for arms, and, once again, there were constant delay of payment. So much so that many of Zhang’s colleagues committed suicide after accumulating debt and going bankrupt. Afterward there was no mention of Zhang’s family in the records anymore. It is assumed that all of Zhang’s family had either starved to death or died in some other horrendous way. And that was when Zhang decided to join the peasant rebellion and went on to become one of the leaders of rebellion known throughout Chinese history.

From the story of Zhang’s upbringing and path to leadership, we can see the microcosm of a society that was on the verge of total collapse. The government was basically bankrupt. The higher officials continue to squeeze everything out of the common people. There were famine, plague, natural disaster, and war everywhere. It was either to eat other people or to be eaten, literally, since it is well documented that cannibalism was very common throughout this period.

And Zhang Xianzhong were just one of many, each of them was more ruthless in killing than the other. According to modern Chinese historians, while it is true that Zhang killed many people in Sichuan, the complete depopulation of Sichuan were committed by the Manchu princes: Dorgon多尔衮, and Hooge豪格. Due to the Qing dynasty being founded and ruled by the Manchus, the crimes were covered up. Their argument was that during the peak of his rein, Zhang was only able to control Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, and its surrounding areas. The other cities of Sichuan were in the control of other lesser-knwon warlords. Yet after Zhang was defeated and killed by the Manchus, the entire Sichuan province became so depopulated over the course of its conqueset that, after Manchu gained complete control of China, they had to import people from southern parts of China (湖廣) to “fill in” Sichuan in a campaign known as “湖廣填四川”. The rulers who conquered the entire Sichuan province were Dorgon and Hooge. There can be one reason for the discrepancy in the number of people being missing. There must have been thoroughly ethnic cleansing in Sichuan carried out that were not recorded in the historical records.

3. Yangzhou massacre 扬州十日, three massacres of Jiading 嘉定三屠, etc.

Around the end of Ming Dynasty, the total Chinese population were around 100 million. After 50 years of internecine wars, the total Chinese population, at the beginning of Qing dynasty, was only 14 million. It is therefore surmised that more than 80 million people died of unnatural causes, and by unnatural causes, the historians means wars, famine, ethnic cleansing, massacre, etc.

In fact, during the conquest of China, the policy the Manchu had toward the Han Chinese, which is technically what is considered Chinese, has always been one and only one: ethnic cleansing. The Manchu were few in number, the Han Chinese, or otherwise known as “the Chinese”, are numerous, and so for any Chinese who were not willing to subjugate to the the rule of Manchus, death would be their only alternative.

When Nurhaci 努尔哈赤 conquered all of North East China, what is known today as Manchuria, they were worried that the local Chinese, being impoverished and dirt-poor, would rebel, so they slaughtered them in a campaign known as “killing poor devils” “杀穷鬼”. A few years later, they became worried about the wealthier Chinese who were going to rebel, so they killed the wealthy Chinese too, in a campaign known as “killing wealthy household”, “杀富户”. Overall, it’s estimated that Nurhaci, during this reign in North East China killed a total of 3 million Chinese over the span of few years. Basically nearly all Chinese in North East China vaporized. Modern Chinese living in North East China today were almost all immigrants from Shangdong near the end of Qing dynasty. Similarly, when Nurhaci conquered Jinzhou, a city near Beijing, in three days, all Chinese were massacred. During the passage through Jinan 济南 in Shandong province, corpses being dumped out of the city was estimated to be around 130,000 (official record). Note the use of the word “passage”. The city of Jinan was already conquered at the time. The army were merely passing through Jinan to go to another city for war.

When Yanzhou 扬州 was conquered, 800,000 civilians were massacred. Eye witness account says that when the Chinese saw a Manchu soldier, no matter how numerous in number, they would all prostrate and beg for mercy, and none of them would try to escape. The Manchu soldier would proceed to behead them one by one like a butcher in a pork shop.

Another Manchu soldier encountered ten young and strong Chinese men. The Manchu soldier yelled: “barbarians come!” Then all the Chinese men sheepishly came forward. The Manchu soldier then would escort them to the slaughte house, and none of them dared to fight back. Once at the slaughter house, the Manchu soldier yelled: “Kneel!” All of them knelt down immediately and were butchered like domestic animals.

Similar things happened in other towns and cities and they are too numerous it honestly gets boring. It’s just a lot of statistics and always about how docile the Chinese were.

A more interesting thing is about the lack of Chinese females though. It is said that after the complete conquest of China, a lot of Chinese families no longer had daughters, because all the daughters were taken as sex slaves by the Manchus, so much so that 9 out of 10 Chinese families do not have daughters.

Honorable Mentions:

And we haven’t even gotten to Mao Zedong who killed more than 70 million Chinese yet! And we didn’t even talk about Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Möngke Khan, and the massacre and ransacking that happened throughout China after the demise of Yuan Dynasty.

We are not even talking about Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋, the founding emperor of Ming Dynasty, who was just as murderous as Mao Zedong, if you read the historical records.

I didn’t go anywhere before 1600 AD because, according to most westerners, that’s when we have entered modern age. So while in the west they were living in the modern age, the Chinese were still living in dark ages, and probably still are today.

Conclusion:

So all in all, after reading and listening to many of the historical records, lectures, and historiography, I feel Rape of Nanking was rather pretty mundane in comparison. It is definitely well documented, but in terms of the sheer level of cruelty and even scale, it’s not much compared to what the Chinese did to themselves throughout their history.

And given everything that they had done to themselves, it’s not too far fetched to consider the possibility that Chinese would have been better off if they had indeed been conquered by Japan.

References:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%A4%A7%E5%B1%A0%E6%9D%80%E5%88%97%E8%A1%A8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist_chop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Changhui

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandalwood_Death

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooge,_Prince_Su

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorgon

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%98%89%E5%AE%9A%E4%B8%89%E5%B1%A0

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%89%AC%E5%B7%9E%E5%8D%81%E6%97%A5

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%98%8E%E6%9C%AB%E6%B8%85%E5%88%9D%E5%B1%A0%E6%AE%BA%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6

https://catalog-test.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/Record/8843723

https://news.cctv.com/science/20080925/103047.shtml