Experts recalled the historical significance of the SCO day
September 2 marks the 80th anniversary of the defeat of militaristic Japan and the end of World War II. The celebration of this date coincides with the historic summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China, where more than 20 world leaders gathered, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. For China, the victory over Japan has become a symbol of preserving the unity of the country, experts say.
"This war, as well as Soviet assistance in repelling Japanese aggression in general, were of tremendous importance to China, since the Japanese occupation forces pursued a policy of genocide on Chinese territory, which, according to estimates by modern Chinese researchers, killed at least 35 million people. These are not only military personnel, but also civilians," Dmitry Surzhik, chief specialist of the expert and analytical department of the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.
One of the most terrible events of that time was the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, when the Japanese invaders massacred and raped the civilian population for six weeks. The victory in this war has become all the more important for China, as a result of which it defended its right to independence, Alexey Fenenko, professor at the Faculty of World Politics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, said in a conversation with Izvestia.
"The point was that China could simply cease to exist as a single state. Nevertheless, China has managed to hold out, somewhere maneuvering between the great powers, somewhere due to military successes and the guerrilla movement. As a result, it has been preserved as a single state," the historian emphasized.
Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:
By kind of friendship: how the USSR and China fought Japanese militarism
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