China a main battleground of World Anti-Fascist War: president

The Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was an important part of the World Anti-Fascist War, and China was its main battleground in the East, said Chinese President Hu Jintao Saturday in Beijing.

In the second half of the 19th century, Japan embarked on a road of militarism and launched or participated in a number of wars of aggression, most of which were against China, he said when addressing a grand gathering here marking the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

In 1931,Japan engineered the September 18th Incident, resulting in its occupation of the three northeastern provinces of China. And it started an all-out war of aggression against China, marked by its shelling of the county seat of Wanping and attack on the Lugou Bridge on July 7, 1937.

Japanese aggressors devastated large tracts of Chinese territory and occupied most of the major cities, attempting to colonize China and on that basis, annex the rest of Asia and dominate the world, he said.

"The brazen aggression against China by Japanese militarists plunged the country into an unprecedented national crisis," the president said.

At this critical puncture when threatened by national subjugation and racial extinction, the Chinese people refused to be slaves and rose up in a heroic resistance, he said.

The September 18th Incident in 1931 marked the start of their War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the unrelenting struggle they put up on a local basis was, in fact, the prelude to the World Anti-Fascist War, according to the president.

"The July 7th Incident in 1937 marked the outbreak of the World Anti-Fascist War in the East, in that China's national war of resistance opened the first battleground, massive in scale, in the world war against Fascism," he said.

Source: Xinhua