WWII celebration plans to score points

WHEN Chinese President Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, he stated that "Japan must look at history squarely and more towards the future". Mr Xi's carefully selected words were taken from a text agreed upon in advance by the two countries' foreign ministries. Behind the words lurks an agreement Mr Xi has made with Russian President Vladimir Putin to jointly use the 70th anniversary in 2015 to "safeguard the outcome of the victory of World War II and post-WWII order". The joint celebration plan aims to warn Japan against historical revision and could create difficulties for the United States-Japan alliance.

Mr Putin and Mr Xi had already made known at their Shanghai meeting in May that Russia and China would organise joint events in a 2015 commemoration of the victory over "German fascism and Japanese militarism" with a view to "counteracting the efforts at falsifying the history and undermining the post-war world". Implicitly this was meant as an attack on Mr Abe's December 2013 visit to the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Mr Putin spoke in Shanghai about the "great heroism of our peoples in World War II, which brings Russia and China even closer".

At a time when the West and Japan apply sanctions against Russia, Mr Putin has moved ever closer to China. In addition to signing gas deals and increasing Russia's imports of foodstuffs, he sees China as a partner in correctly remembering history.The prospects of joint commemoration in Europe are now limited. Not much can be organised with Ukraine, on whose territory some of the worst battles were fought, and Russia could struggle organising celebrations with the USSR's Western allies, including the United Kingdom, France or Poland. These days, moreover, commemorative events of both World War I and WWII in Europe are generally organised with German participation. The idea is to heal wounds rather than open them. Hence Mr Putin turns to China for a united celebratory front against Japan, although this will not help resolve the dispute over the Kurile Islands, which were seized by the USSR in August 1945 and remain under Russian occupation.