Biljana Vankovska

As China prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory over fascism on September 3, 2025, global attention turns to Beijing’s military parade. Speculation swirls about which world leaders will join President Xi Jinping—Putin’s presence is all but certain, though whispers of Trump attending seem far-fetched. Some peace advocates argue this moment offers a chance for global powers to reflect on World War II’s horrors, a sentiment aligned with the UN Charter’s spirit and urgent amid rising global tensions. Yet, European leaders’ refusal to attend, citing concerns about offending Japan, reveals a deeper issue. China’s commemoration closes the cycle of WWII anniversaries, but it begs a critical question: do we truly understand this war’s global scope, or have we allowed vital chapters to fade into obscurity?

A glaring gap exists in our collective memory of World War II—a war we call “global,” yet one where the role of the fourth allied victor, China, is consistently sidelined. China entered the conflict first in 1931, not 1939, and endured until Japan’s surrender in 1945. Over 14 years, it suffered approximately 35 million casualties and tied down a million Japanese troops, enabling the USSR and USA to focus elsewhere. Leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin acknowledged China’s pivotal role in shaping the war’s outcome. So why is this contribution so often ignored and buried under layers of Western-focused narratives?

For many, World War II’s defining tragedy is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, horrific acts that serve as a stark warning of humanity’s destructive power, unleashed by the United States. These events deserve remembrance, but the subsequent U.S. occupation of Japan and the imposed peace constitution (also known as the MacArthur Constitution) were less about harmony than securing a strategic foothold in the Indo-Pacific during the Cold War. Today, Japan arms itself under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, ostensibly to counter a “threat” from China. This narrative twist is as convenient as it is misleading.

Like Russia, which fiercely preserves its WW II sacrifices, China now demands recognition for its own. Its resistance to Japanese militarism remains a largely untold saga. A glimpse into this “black hole” of collective memory reveals atrocities that defy comprehension: the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, where 300,000 civilians were killed and mass rapes committed; Unit 731’s chemical and biological experiments on prisoners, including children, so vile they shocked even Nazi observers. German envoys urged Berlin to restrain Tokyo, while Japanese records meticulously documented their brutal chaos. Brave Japanese historians have since exposed these horrors, yet they remain marginal in global discourse. Why the silence?

Uncovering WWII’s history from Asia’s perspective exposes a shameful truth: Western narratives, amplified by Hollywood and media, have selectively glorified some stories while erasing others. The result? Perpetrators are rehabilitated, and victims recast as villains. The West often clings to a biased stance that values some lives over others. Chinese victims have received scant global acknowledgment, their suffering overshadowed by Japan’s post-war redemption narrative. This hypocrisy echoes today in Gaza, where selective outrage, tears for Ukraine but silence for 22 months of Gazan suffering under Israel’s policies, reveals the same double standard. European leaders, shaped by colonial legacies they frame as a “civilizing mission,” are complicit. Meanwhile, the U.S. fuels a trade war with China and, as Kaja Kallas and some media outlets warn, braces for broader conflict, while painting China as “authoritarian and belligerent.” This clashes starkly with China’s anti-fascist history and its modern commitment to global peace.

The adage that victors write history unravels here. China, a clear victor, was denied the platform to showcase its courage, sacrifices, and contributions. Today, it’s unjustly branded as a threat by Western discourse. World War II neither began nor ended in Europe. China, a founding UN member and the first to sign the UN Charter, remains its most steadfast supporter. It rejects the U.S.-dominated narrative, crafted by a latecomer to the war that suffered the least yet unleashed atomic devastation. China’s WWII legacy fuels its modern mission: eradicating poverty, aiding the Global South, building global infrastructure, and championing peace and a shared future for mankind.

Beijing’s commemoration is a bold rebuttal to the West’s monopolization of WWII memory. As Warwick Powell aptly states: “For eight decades, the West has rewritten World War II as an U.S. and European victory, relegating China to footnote status. China’s commemoration this year challenges that amnesia, reclaiming the country’s role as a central force in defeating fascism.” In today’s troubled times, however, remembrance alone isn’t enough. From Gaza to beyond, the fight against inhumanity and fascism demands we confront these historical blind spots and their modern echoes.

[Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective. Courtesy: Globetrotter, a project of Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit organization that educates the public through a diverse array of independent media projects and programs.]

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In another article, They Shall Not Pass: Our Call Against Fascism, Vijay Prashad adds (extract):

A walk through the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression in Beijing makes one despise war and everything about militarism. The museum is not far from the Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge, where the Chinese people began their war to liberate their country from the Japanese occupation in the north. The most striking parts of the museum are those that demonstrate the ugly violence of Japanese militarism, such as the Nanjing Massacre (1937—1938); the horrendous biological and chemical warfare and unspeakable human experimentation conducted by Unit 731 in the northeastern city of Harbin (1936—1945); and the prisons for ianfu (‘comfort women’) that the Japanese military established to hold sex slaves for their soldiers.

As you wander through the museum, it becomes clear that millions of Chinese civilians died in what was the longest part of World War II: a war between the Japanese militarists and the Chinese people that lasted from 1937 to 1945. The numbers are stunning: at least twenty million Chinese civilians and soldiers were killed, eighty million people were made refugees, thirty percent of the infrastructure in the Pearl River delta near Canton was destroyed, more than half of Shanghai was demolished, and eighty percent of China’s capital Nanjing was reduced to rubble. The Japanese Army’s Three Alls Policy (burn all, kill all, rob all) was genocidal in every aspect (in 1942, in a village in Hebei province, for instance, the Japanese Army pumped poisonous gas into a tunnel where eight hundred peasants were hiding, killing them all).

The death toll during World War II continues to provoke debate and discussion. However, there is little dispute that the largest number of dead came from the Soviet Union (27 million—the current population of Australia) and from China (20 million—the current population of Chile). The Soviet numbers come from many sources, including the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), which was set up to investigate war crimes in 1942. The first of such tribunals was established in Krasnodar (North Caucasus) after the Red Army recaptured Nalchik from the Nazis on 4 January 1943. This tribunal found thousands of corpses of people killed by poison gas in an anti-tank ditch near the city. Two years earlier, in 1941, the Nazi high command had formulated what was known as the Hunger Plan to divert food from the Soviet Union, resulting in the death of 4.2 million Soviet citizens.

We are dealing with unfathomable numbers—a million killed here, a few thousand there, another hundred thousand elsewhere. What bureau of statistics can stomach this awful ledger of death?

As we commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of this war against fascism and militarism (3 September 1945), the No Cold War collective has prepared what we are calling the Santiago Appeal, a plea against war and for peace. We urge you to read it and share it so that—like the Stockholm Appeal of 1950—we can get millions of people to adopt no pasarán (they shall not pass) as our watchword:

War is the ultimate betrayal of human creativity, life’s worth, and the planet we share.

Eighty years ago, the United States dropped the first atomic bombs, awakening a weapon of unparalleled horror that still threatens us all.

Millions died defeating fascism and militarism; among them were the Soviet and Chinese people who made extraordinary sacrifices and bore the heaviest burdens.

Their courage demands more than memory; it demands action.

We reject the endless cycle of violence fuelled by imperialism and greed.

We demand a future where peace, justice, and shared prosperity prevail—where humanity lives in harmony with nature, protecting the Earth for generations to come.

Disarm now, end militarisation, and build a world where all life can thrive.

[Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books. Courtesy: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, an international, movement-driven institution focused on stimulating intellectual debate that serves people’s aspirations.]