Sino-Japanese war remembered amid concern truth is distorted

China staged official commemorations yesterday marking the 65th anniversary of the end of the second Sino-Japanese war, but a senior People's Liberation Army officer says Beijing has been progressively playing down the significance of the war for economic reasons.

President Hu Jintao yesterday led the chairman of the National People's Congress, Wu Bangguo, Premier Wen Jiabao and the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee, in paying homage to the Chinese soldiers who died fighting Japanese aggression from 1937 to 1945, Xinhua reported.

It said Hu and the other leaders placed wreaths to honour the war martyrs at the Museum of the War of the Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Beijing, while veterans, foreigners who helped China fight and other citizens also mourned silently.

It appears to have been the first time that all nine top Chinese leaders have formally attended a ceremony commemorating the war.

A PLA Daily commentary written by Major General Jin Yinan yesterday accused some local governments of removing some chapters about Sino-Japanese history from textbooks to please Japanese investors. '[The war] was the Chinese people's first victory in the hundred years since the first opium war ... it woke up the whole nation,' Jin wrote. 'It should not be forgotten. But reality has forced us to forget it.'

The article cited the removal from textbooks in Shanghai, Hunan and other places of the story of five national heroes who preferred to jump off a cliff on Langyashan, Hebei , rather than surrender to the Japanese army in 1941.