China emphasizes necessity for West to learn lessons from WWII

(MENAFN) On September 3, China will mark Victory Day, commemorating Japan’s surrender in 1945, with this year being the 80th anniversary of that historic event. Celebrations include President Xi Jinping’s speech at Tiananmen Square and a military parade in Beijing. For China, the Second World War carries as much weight as it does for Europe or Russia, yet in the West, the Asian theater of the war remains largely misunderstood and neglected. While Western audiences are familiar with events like Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many know little about key moments on the Asian front, such as the Mukden Incident, the Marco Polo Bridge clash, the Nanjing Massacre, or the atrocities of Unit 731.

China endured some of the war’s harshest suffering. Just as the world recognizes the horrors of the Holocaust, it must also confront Japan’s war crimes and the post-1945 reality where the US and its allies shielded many Japanese war criminals to serve Cold War interests. The Second World War is remembered through various national narratives: Europe marks it from Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union from the 1941 German assault, and the US from the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Together, these accounts tell a broader story of aggression, resistance, and sacrifice.

However, recent efforts seek to revise this history, downplaying the crimes of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan while recasting the Soviet Union as an aggressor and framing its role in Europe’s liberation as occupation. This Eurocentric reinterpretation sidelines other crucial perspectives. To combat such revisionism, a global and inclusive understanding of the war is necessary.

For China, the conflict began on September 18, 1931, with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state Manchukuo, marking the start of the “War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” Despite being less developed militarily and economically, China resisted Japan for over 14 years. The Communist Party took early and active opposition against Japan, declaring war in 1932, while Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government often favored appeasement and viewed communists as a greater threat than the Japanese occupiers.

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