85431 - Transcription: Security Council and China

N. Lygeros

This podcast is an attempt to  understand the role and the position of China in the Security Council. He have to study the historical substrate to understand what it’s going on right now. In reality many countries are asking why we have China in the Security Council. And the reason in fact is not so obvious because we know that China is right now a communist country but at that time it wasn’t. In reality the explanation comes from the war, the Second War between China and Japan. So this war started in 1937 and ended in 1945 with the help of the US. The reason was the following thing. In the first war between China and Japan the victory was Japanese. And it was a clear difference about the modelisation of the society and of course the weapons. The Qing dynasty of China was behind, far behind. So the Japanese get a victory in a rather simple way. After that we have other problems, I don’t want to analyze them right now but maybe in another podcast and we had the second war between those countries. The idea was the following. The Japanese victory at least the first years was a fact. And the big difference was made only after the attack of Pearl Harbor. Of course, before the Soviet Union and even the US were helping China but not at this level. After Pearl Harbor everything changed. The idea was to recognize China as one of the Big Four Allies. It was a way to show that they preferred China to Japan and it was also a way to create the Security Council. But at that time China was nationalist, it wasn’t communist. In fact the decision was made many years after in the seventies to recognize officially the new China as the successor of the previous war. So, now we have a Security Council with China not because it was in the same way at the beginning but it was a change. We have to keep in mind that without the Second War between China and Japan, China wouldn’t be in the Security Council. The idea is now when we are talking about change in the future especially for the permanent members, we are  talking especially about India, Brazil or even Japan. We have to keep in mind this historical explanation to know what to do in the future.