Here are some pictures from the history textbooks Chinese History (the old ones and the new one):
So it says it’s China and the world that defeated Japan.
About world history, though I haven’t a picture, as I remembered, it’s the world that defeated the fascist too. And the overwhelming force is not the US, it’s Soviet. The US doesn’t appear much in a Chinese history textbook.
update:
Just got some captures from the World History, old vision and new. To my suprise, the US appears a lot.
And still, soviet appears more. In the end, it says it is the anti-fascist countries all the world that defeat Japan, Germany and other fascist countries.
I drawed different countries into different colors fyi.
(Wonder how history textbooks in other countries looks like if their WWII story shows in different colors like below.)
An astonishing number of the current 66 answers to this question (as of 05 Oct 20) are strong defense of the premise that China was the principal or a top principal in Japanese defeat. This is not correct.
The USA won WW2 in the Pacific and it would not have happened without the USA and even if the USA had no partners, the USA would have still prevailed.
We have the ability to understand what would have happened because we have ‘perfect’ information about what actually happened and can use that information to extrapolate other potential historical paths.
The USA would have crushed Japan even if it did nothing more than hold Hawaii and defend Australia between 1942 and 1946 and slowly acquire a couple of islands suitable for long range bombing.
In 1946, the USA could have entered the war in force with tens of thousands of heavy bombers (like the B-29) and even more powerful B-36 bombers only a year away (1947). The USA had the ability to deliver conventional iron bombs in quantities beyond belief:
The USA could produce conventional munitions at 8x the rate of Japan and only stopped at 8x because it had more munitions than it could use!
And of course by January 1946, the USA would have had 20 nuclear weapons ready for use with another 100 produced in 1946 and 500 to 1,000 each year following.
It is difficult to understand power of this magnitude.
The above link is a great reference on strategic conventional bombing. Just three Japanese cities in May 1945 often received over 3,000 tons of bombs per day. Across Japan, tens of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped. In three cities alone, over 800,000 buildings were destroyed.
In these 3 cities alone, over 50% of the population was driven out:
Reading the referenced report you will see similar tables for inter-coastal shipping losses, trucking declines, electrical power declines, coal declines, etc. Conventional bombing crushed the heartland of the Japanese empire. These were not distant battlefronts but the homes and businesses of the core empire!
And then add in Atomic weapons. There were less than 70 cities in Japan worth bombing in WW2. By the end of 1947, the USA bombers would have been able to bomb each city three to five times and then do it all over in 1948!
Japan was not going to recover from this a hundred times over (Hiroshima):
There were no British or Chinese or Russian or Dutch or ??? bombers ever over Japan.
Of course it would not have gone on that long. In the real war, Japan surrendered because of the homeland devastation and the likelihood that it would continue. Unlike other wars, the Japanese continental empire still existed while the homeland was destroyed. It wasn’t losses in distant places that ended the war, it was total devastation of almost every Japanese city by August 1945. I cannot imagine what Japan would have been like a year later (no invasion) … there would have been no civilization left at all. Japan would have ceased to exist, probably for all time.
All brought about by the USA.
There was a real war in China but at best it was a stalemate all the way to the wars end. We know from history that Chinese were more concerned about the need to have troops to fight the civil war than about putting troops in the field against the Japanese. During the war the USA gave China almost $1.5B in aid (1945 $), an enormous amount and it’s likely that the limited holding action of the Chinese would not have happened without this aid. Hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies … over 100,000 tons by April 1942 alone.
The picture in 1945, in the real war, was that China only fought in China and the level of success was a stalemate at best.
China has made remarkable civil society improvements since 1960. And astonishing improvements since 1990. This should be a source of immense pride to all Chinese. The failures of previous Chinese regimes shouldn’t be excused or covered up with wish full thinking. The mistakes should be acknowledged and learned from. The Chinese recovery of the last 70 years is real and the attempt to claim victory against Japan isn’t.
China and the rest of the world should be thankful of the existence of the USA in the WW2 period and understand the level of selflessness of the USA during this period. Chinese accomplishments are built on this foundation.
China is not served with false claims of victory and it should acknowledge the truth of how the Pacific war was won.
And hopefully China will build a presence in the world that provides other countries the kind of help they received in WW2 from the USA.
Note 10 Oct 2020: For those interested in more discussion on this topic/answer, I suggest that you take the time to read the replies below. There are dozens of substantive comments that extend the discussion in several good directions. Many good and thoughtful Quora member responses, even if they disagree with me.
