Toting rifles, ten formations of goose-stepping troops marched past the Tian'anmen Rostrum on Thursday morning, rekindling the glorious past of forces led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in defeating Japanese invaders in World War II. [Special coverage]
All the ten formations in the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII were named after the most famous army units of CPC-led forces in the war against Japanese aggression.
The mainstay role of the CPC and its forces is the linchpin in defeating the Japanese militarism, said Gao Yongzhong, a researcher with the Party History Research Center of the CPC Central Committee, citing a conclusion first proposed by CPC wartime leader Mao Zedong.
At a press conference on Aug. 13 on the role of the CPC in WWII, Gao said Chinese historians' research showed that CPC-led forces pinned down 60 percent of the invading Japanese army at the backstage battlefield, killing some 527,000 Japanese troops.
The 70 banners they were holding may offer a glimpse to the hardship and bloody fighting the troops had endured at that time -- "Five heroes of Mount Langya" was in memory of the five heroes who jumped off a cliff to avoid being captured near Yixian County in Hebei Province in September 1941 after successfully stalling an enemy offensive but were later encircled by Japanese troops.
The story of the five heroes was so inspiring that it even got included in the textbooks of Chinese primary school students. A 1958 movie was also based on the story.
Another banner was in honor of a heroic company who used bayonets to repulse an enemy attack in the "Hundred-Regiment Campaign," a massive, morale-boosting offensive by more than 100 Communist-led regiments against Japanese troops in 1940. Statistics show that the campaign killed or injured 20,645 Japanese troops and 5,155 collaborationist troops, dealing a heavy blow to the military strategy of the Japanese Army.
Lu Shaoze, a military official from the office organizing the parade, said the names of the ten representative formation were singled out from more than 700 CPC-led wartime army units above the regiment rank. "All of them are principal forces in the nationwide resistance."
Other heroic armies in the parade include counter-Japanese aggression forces with roots in the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, the Northeast United Resistance Army and the South China Counter-Japanese Guerrillas.
The active units' presence in the parade is in honor of the bravery of their predecessors and show that determination to safeguard national sovereignty and security has passed to later generations, said Qu Rui, Deputy Chief of the Operation Department of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Headquarters.
