Xi Jinping blasts Japan at 77th anniversary ceremony of Marco Polo Bridge Incident
High-profile Sino-Japanese war ceremony seen as aimed at Taiwanese
Xi Jinping yesterday became the first Chinese president to attend an official ceremony commemorating the start of the Sino-Japanese war, as Beijing ramps up its efforts to denounce Japan's wartime atrocities.
Xi joined more 1,000 people at a ceremony in Beijing to mark the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident which sparked the war.
Besides stepping up its campaign against Japan's lifting of its post-war ban on overseas military operations, commentators said Beijing held the unusually high-profile ceremony in a bid to try to unite the people of the mainland and Taiwan against Japan's wartime atrocities.
Watch: Archive newsreel about the Marco Polo Bridge incident
"No one can revise history and truth," Xi said during the ceremony. "Chinese people who made great sacrifices [during the war] would never allow anyone to play down [Japan's] wartime atrocities."
Accompanied by Nationalist war veteran Lin Shangyuan, a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, one of eight registered minor non-communist parties on the mainland, Xi unveiled a statue named after the Medal of Independence and Freedom awarded to Sino-Japanese war veterans.