Chinese President Xi Jinping absent from low-key ceremony to mark Nanking massacre anniversary
Second formal memorial day broadcast live on state TV but speech given by NPC vice-chairman
China held a memorial ceremony Sunday for victims of the 1937 massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing, with President Xi Jinping skipping the event after attending last year, as the two countries have moved toward repairing their often-testy relations.
This year’s ceremony in the eastern Chinese city comes after China’s successful bid in October to include documents on the military rampage in the “Memory of the World” program by Unescothe UN cultural agency.
China last year designated Dec. 13 as a national memorial day for the victims and for the first time held a state observance of the tragedy that Beijing says killed more than 300,000.
The previous ceremony was spotlighted internationally as Xi delivered a speech saying that nobody can deny the atrocities, at a time when Sino-Japanese relations were still much more fragile than they are now.
However, in addition to Xi, none of the others who sit on the Chinese ruling Communist Party’s seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s apex of power, participated in this year’s event.