China to mark day of victory

Photos of some of the Chinese pilots with the famous Flying Tigers fighter jets fleet on display at a museum in Zhijiang, Hunan province. Photo: Chang Meng/GT

Nation commemorates war against Japanese aggression

Top Chinese leaders are to attend a commemoration Wednesday of the 69th anniversary of victory in China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

The commemoration is part of a series of high-profile events which have been marked on an unprecedented scale.

Analysts believe the events serve as a reminder to the Chinese people of the hardship they endured and as a call to unite under the current leadership while Sino-Japan relations remain strained.

A grand ceremony in Beijing Wednesday morning will include a commemoration at the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance against Japanese Aggression at Lugou Bridge, which top Party leaders will attend, a museum employee confirmed.

Photo exhibitions, performances and book recitals will also be held in Beijing from Wednesday to Friday.

On Tuesday, a one-year charity program kicked off in Beijing which aims to find surviving soldiers.

Other memorial activities were held Tuesday in other Chinese cities that shared painful memories in the war, such as Shanghai, Nanjing and Hong Kong.

"The commemoration has some important practical significance as 1945 marks the first victory against foreign invasion in modern Chinese history. It also comes against the backdrop of new difficulties both domestic and in diplomacy," said Wang Shaopu, an expert of Japanese studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

China is at a critical phase in social and economic reforms while relations with Japan have deteriorated over territorial disputes and Japanese politicians' repeated denial of its aggressive past.

"The 1945 victory came at a time when Chinese people were united under the same purpose. The message could be that the spirit of unity is still highly valued now," Wang said.

On Monday, Beijing announced a list of 300 martyrs and heroes who sacrificed their lives during the Japanese invasion. The list was the first official catalogue where soldiers from the Kuomintang, the ruling party before the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, were also honored.

"In my opinion, the list is a good improvement and shows honest respect to history. It presents a record free of ideological influence or the historic conflict between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang," said Yang Tianshi, a history professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

His opinion was echoed by Chen I-hsin, a political science professor from Taiwan's Tamkong University, who told the Global Times that the Chinese mainland's effort to honor the Kuomintang soldiers will be appreciated by Taiwan and seen as a good gesture.

To many others, the memorial is a part of a global trend to commemorate the world wars that drastically changed human history and geopolitics.

"China made a great contribution to the victory and [suffered] great casualties of around 35 million. The CPC also played a big role, especially the two attacks in 1945, which liberated over 17 million people and solidified the final success," said Ma Zhendu, vice director of the Second Historic Archives of China, based in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.

"One of the most important things that countries do when they are commemorating their past is learning and using education to understand how to prevent such wars happening again in the future. Interest in this part in this case is also a contribution towards providing more peaceful settlement in Asia as a whole in the present day," Rana Mitter, director of Oxford University's China Center, told the Global Times.

China has agreed to hold joint memorial events with South Korea next year to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the war's end.