Xi: history of war cannot be denied
Print Edition
PRESIDENT Xi Jinping yesterday criticized those who “beautify the history of aggression,” as China commemorated the 77th anniversary of the start of the Anti-Japanese War.
“History is history and facts are facts. Nobody can change history and facts,” Xi said when addressing a crowd of more than 1,000 people at the Museum of the War of the Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression on the outskirts of Beijing.
“Anyone who intends to deny, distort or beautify the history of aggression will never be tolerated by Chinese people, and people of all other countries,” he said, referring to the widespread concerns that Japan is trying to distort the history of the war.
The Anti-Japanese War began in 1937 and ended with Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II in 1945.
“It’s a pity that a small minority of people still ignore iron-clad history and the fact that tens of millions of innocent people lost their lives in the war,” Xi said.
This minority has repeatedly denied or even beautified the history of aggression, undermining mutual trust among states and creating regional tensions. Such behavior has been strongly condemned by the world’s peace-loving people, he said.
“History is the best textbook, as well as the best dose of sobriety,” the president said, adding that Chinese people who remember the torment of war have always been in pursuit of peace.
“History tells us that any aggression by force is doomed to fail ... China will unswervingly pursue the road of peaceful development and hopes all other countries can take the same road,” he said.
Xi’s remarks came after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet on July 1 endorsed a reinterpretation of its pacifist Constitution, which would give it the right to collective self-defense.
The move sparked concerns Japan might return to its former militarism.
Japan first invaded northeast China in September, 1931, though historians agree that a full-scale invasion began on July 7, 1937, when a crucial access point to Beijing, Lugou Bridge, was attacked by Japanese troops.
About 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed or injured during the war, with at least 300,000 people slaughtered in the Nanjing Massacre alone.
China at that time faced the most direct of threats, the president said, prompting “all ethnic groups, classes, parties, social organizations and patriots from all circles, as well as Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan compatriots and overseas Chinese, to unite and throw themselves into a grand struggle which meant life and death for the Chinese nation.”
The Communist Party of China also shouldered its responsibilities by calling for a national united front against Japan, he said.
Calling the Chinese people’s resistance a “heroic ode,” in which patriots “bathed in blood,” Xi said yesterday’s gathering should serve to recall history, commemorate martyrs, cherish peace and sound a warning for the future.
In the company of two veteran Chinese soldiers who fought in the war — one from the Communist Party of China and another from the Kuomintang — and a group of local teenagers, Xi unveiled a commemorative sculpture.
The statue is based on a military medal designed for veterans of the Anti-Japanese War.
The sculpture “commemorates those who gave their lives fighting for national independence and freedom, as well as those who made great contributions to peace and justice, and to console the victims of the war,” Xi said.
China has long been disgruntled by the interpretation of history by Japanese right-wing politicians.
Li Buhong, 90, from De’an county in Jiangxi Province, is among the dwindling ranks of war veterans. He was 13 at the time of the Lugou Bridge Incident.
“I have seen the cold-blooded, inhuman violence the Japanese invaders committed,” he said.
“I saw them cut out a baby from a pregnant woman and spike it with a bayonet ... Now they want to deny their invasion,” he said.
Pan Xun, from Chongqing’s Southwest University, called on the government to enhance research and protection of historical records from the 1937-45 period in a bid to thwart attempts to distort Japan’s history of aggression.
“More people, including the Japanese, should learn from history, and face up to history, so that we can understand the brutality of war,” he said.
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