China's war victory claim aimed at rewriting history

WHILE China's dazzling military parade last week can be understood on several levels, the underlying purpose of the entire show, in which 30 heads of state or government participated, was clear and straightforward: It was to rewrite history. Dartmouth College historian Pamela Kyle Crossley aptly dubbed the entire exercise "the pursuit of purloined glory".

Chinese President Xi Jinping sonorously claimed in his address atop the Tiananmen Square rostrum: "Seventy years ago today, the Chinese people, having fought tenaciously for 14 years, won the great victory of their War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression."

None of his guests was rude enough to contradict him, but many must have known that what happened 70 years ago was that the United States, not China, defeated Japan. In fact, up to Aug 15, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, China had been unable to end the Japanese occupation of large parts of the country.