Amid tense relations with Tokyo, China yesterday marked the 68th anniversary of the start of World War II fighting against Japanese invaders with commemorations that mixed defiant official comments and the release of doves symbolizing peace.
A senior Communist Party leader, Li Changchun (
The event also was attended by several hundred soldiers and students who held a moment of silence for millions of Chinese war dead and released 3,000 gray doves.
"The Chinese people, who refused to become slaves, rose up in arms and fought hard and tenaciously against Japanese aggressor troops, and won the complete victory against foreign aggression in modern times," Liu Yunshan, another senior party figure, said in a speech.
Commemorations this year come at a time when Beijing's relations with Tokyo are at their lowest point in decades. They have been soured by disputes over Japanese history textbooks, Tokyo's campaign for a permanent UN Security Council seat and rivalry over undersea oil and gas resources.
Beijing regards Tokyo as its main rival for status as the region's military power. The communist government regularly marks war anniversaries and keeps alive memories of Japanese aggression through schoolbooks and state media.
"The peace situation of today may not last forever," said Leng Jian, a soldier at the war memorial. "We should do good work in our positions and improve our physical capabilities and get ready for all kinds of changes in the world arena."
Beijing and Tokyo are linked by billions of dollars in trade, investment and aid. But many Chinese believe Japan has never properly atoned for suffering inflicted on its neighbors during Tokyo's conquest of Asia that began in the early 1930s and ended with its defeat in 1945.
"History is a mirror of present-day realities, and also a textbook teeming with philosophical wisdom," said Liu, the party official.
Beijing wants better relations with Tokyo, a Foreign Ministry official said.
"Harmony benefits both. Strife harms both," a ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao (劉建超), said at a regular news briefing. However, he added: "We hope Japan takes a correct attitude toward history."
The 1937 fighting is regarded by historians as the start of World War II in China although Japan had controlled the country's northeast, then known as Manchuria, since 1933.
The ceremony yesterday included a ribbon-cutting for a new exhibition at the memorial hall with photos of Japanese wartime atrocities and a display of simulated Japanese chemical weapons.
"The exhibition will help rally national togetherness, boost national self-esteem, confidence and sense of pride and encourage Chinese sons and daughters of all ethnic groups at home and abroad to work relentlessly for China's great rejuvenation," Liu said.
Also yesterday, state media reported that two survivors of a 1937 massacre of civilians by Japanese soldiers in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing have been found living in Spain and New Zealand.
Japanese forces killed as many as 300,000 people after Nanjing, then China's capital, fell to the invaders in December 1937.
"It's the first time we have found survivors outside China," Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Memorial Hall for Compatriots Murdered in the Nanjing Massacre, said.
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