You had to admire the audacity of Chinese Communist leader Hu Jintao. Having made his nation the embarrassment of Asia by unleashing riots against the Japanese Embassy in Beijing over a history textbook used by less than 1% of Japanese schools, Hu greeted a shell-shocked Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by demanding “action” (i.e., restitution and/or acquiescence to the Communists’ Taiwan bloodlust). He further demanded that, “no move should be made to offend the people of China.”

The idea that Hu et al can claim to be outraged over the Japanese invasion before and during World War II is laughable. If anything, the Chinese Communist Party should be thanking Japan, for without the Empire’s invasion of the Chinese mainland, the Communists would likely be extinct, rather than in power.

By 1930, Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (Nationalist) forces clearly had the upper hand against the Communists. However, its efforts to deal the fatal blow to the CCP were thwarted by the Japanese invasion. The Communists, knowing full well their real weakness in military strength and political support- threw in with the invaders in the early 1930s, fighting “shoulder to shoulder with Japanese invaders to defeat the KMT” as noted in the invaluable “Commentary Two” (of “The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”).

Meanwhile, the Communists “exhorted the people in the KMT-controlled areas to rebel, calling on ‘workers to strike, peasants to make trouble, students to boycott classes, poor people to quit working, soldiers to revolt’ so as to overthrow the Nationalist government” (“Commentary Two”.) Thus, while Chiang’s forces were fighting off the Japanese invasion from without, they were forced to combat a continuing Communist rebellion from within. The fact that the Communists were quick to incorporate surrendering Japanese forces into its own armies reveal how the Party really saw the war, as a useful tool to weaken and crush anti-Communist Chinese, rather than the supposed “heroic struggle” against Japan.

Of course, the Communists claim to have “shamed” Chiang into fighting the Japanese in late 1936, after capturing and nearly killing him. Once again, the facts reveal otherwise. Chiang, who by now had been forced to fight a two front war for half a decade, was on the cusp of wiping out the CCP, but fell into the Party’s capture due to Communist intrigue and espionage within his inner circle. Only then, when the CCP could twist the banner of “patriotism” to its own advantage, did the CCP ally itself with the KMT.

What this has meant for the Chinese people is already painfully evident. What it means for Japan is much less clear. For years, the Chinese Communist Party has demanded Japan atone for the crimes of its invasion. To be fair, Japan’s occupation of the mainland was beyond brutal in many instances. However, a clear examination of history reveals Japan’s biggest- albeit least recognized- atrocity: its invasion of the mainland gave the Communists new life and a heaven-sent opportunity to increase its power, while at the same time the KMT became so weakened by fighting off Japan that it was unable to recover in time to face the Communists in the late 1940s. Without the Japanese invasion, there is no Communist China- in fact, there would likely be no Chinese Communist Party today.

For this reason, Japan does owe restitution to the Chinese people- but it owes nothing to the CCP.

Japan today is growing increasingly aware of the danger that is the Communist regime they helped spawn. For most of the world, Japan’s growing- and rightly so- alarm is discounted by its past. That’s not fair to Japan, and it is deeply short-sighted and foolish, but it is the truth. However, Japan can quickly put an end to this. Yes, the Chinese people deserve restitution of some kind, but there is no reason for Prime Minister Koizumi et al to simply assume that the Chinese Communists have to be the recipients. In fact, Japan can make amends for World War II while at the same time striking a blow against the Communists by directing the compensation either to (a) the successor to the KMT government it fought- namely the elected, democratic government of Taiwan, or (b) the anti-Communists dissident groups fighting to free China from the CCP. Either action would make clear Japan truly is prepared to “face up to history” while denying the Communists the legitimacy they always crave but never deserve.

By invading Nationalist-controlled China in 1931, Japan set in motion the series of events that put the Chinese Communist Party in power. As such, the Chinese people are still suffering from the effects of said invasion today. If Japan truly wishes to atone for its past, it should direct its policies and restitution to helping the Chinese people free themselves from that criminal regime. Anything given to the Communists will not salve the wounds of that war, but rather pour salt in them.

D.J. McGuire is President and Co-Founder of the China e-Lobby, and the author of Dragon in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror