Liu Xiaoquan and Li Deman: China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression Made Significant Contributions to Saving Human Civilization

In an important speech delivered at the grand gathering commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the Chinese people, through immense national sacrifice, made a significant contribution to saving human civilization and defending world peace. This important discourse by General Secretary Xi Jinping, standing at the height of the history of the development of human civilization, provides a new interpretation of the momentous contribution of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. It offers new ideological inspiration for us to correctly understand and grasp the status and role of this war within the context of the global World Anti-Fascist War.

The victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression defended the civilizational achievements of the Chinese nation’s more than five thousand years of development. Chinese civilization has a long and storied history; through the long river of several millennia, it has been continuously enriched and developed, forming spiritual qualities and developmental forms that emphasize benevolence, people-centeredness, integrity, justice, harmony, and the pursuit of Great Unity ^[1]. It has also formed prominent characteristics of continuity, creativity, unity, inclusiveness, and peacefulness. As the world’s only civilization to continue uninterrupted to the present day, Chinese civilization has constructed a "pluralistic integrated" ^[2] civilizational landscape through its unique civilizational resilience and cultural creativity. For thousands of years, Chinese civilization has been vibrant and ceaseless, and the Chinese people have made indelible contributions to the progress of human civilization through extraordinary creativity. However, after 1840, due to the aggression of Western powers and the corruption of feudal rule, the country was humiliated, the people suffered, and civilization was shrouded in dust. Japan’s sustained aggression against China is the darkest page in the history of modern China. In 1931, the Japanese army launched the September 18th Incident and occupied the entirety of Northeast China. After launching a full-scale war of aggression against China in 1937, they further plotted to turn China into a colony for their exclusive use, subsequently aiming to annex Asia and dominate the world. The barbaric aggression of Japanese militarism caused unprecedentedly enormous disasters for the Chinese people and inflicted massive wounds upon Chinese civilization, while also provoking the Chinese people’s tenacious resistance. Under the banner of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, advocated and established by the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people fought the powerful enemy with unyielding spirit and built a "Great Wall" with their own flesh and blood. Through fourteen years of bloody struggle, they achieved the great victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. This great victory effectively defended national sovereignty and territorial integrity, washed away the national humiliation of successive defeats in resisting foreign aggression in modern history, and re-established China's status as a major power in the world. It defended the civilizational achievements of the Chinese nation’s more than five thousand years of development and embarked upon a new historical journey of "nirvana and rebirth" ^[3] for ancient China.

Through immense national sacrifice, the Chinese people made a significant contribution to saving human civilization. Due to the aggression of fascist forces, human civilization suffered unprecedented destruction; the flames of war spread to more than 80 countries and regions, involving approximately 2 billion people, with total military and civilian casualties exceeding 100 million and property losses reaching 4 trillion US dollars. Saving human civilization became the core task of the World Anti-Fascist War. As a vital component of this global war, the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began the earliest and lasted the longest. The Chinese people, through immense national sacrifice, sustained the main eastern battlefield of the World Anti-Fascist War. In this contest between justice and evil, the Chinese theater pinned down and combated the main forces of Japanese militarism over a long period, playing a decisive role in the thorough destruction of the Japanese aggressors. Furthermore, the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression strategically supported the operations of the Allied forces, coordinating with strategic actions in the European and Pacific theaters. It restricted and disrupted the attempts at strategic coordination between Japanese fascists and German-Italian fascists, ensuring that Germany was consistently unable to obtain Japanese military cooperation in the Far East, which allowed the Soviet Union to redeploy troops from the Far East to resist the German army on the Western Front. The Chinese people paid a massive sacrifice during the War of Resistance; according to incomplete statistics, Chinese military and civilian casualties exceeded 35 million. The victory not only ended the expansionist ambitions of Japanese militarism but also became a historical turning point for the global governance system, moving from collapse toward reconstruction. In 1943, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom issued the Cairo Declaration, which for the first time explicitly deprived Japan of all the islands it had seized or occupied in the Pacific since the start of the First World War in 1914, and stipulated that Chinese territories stolen by Japan, including the Northeast, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands, be returned to China. This principled statement established the legal foundation for the construction of the post-war order. The 1945 Yalta Conference further detailed post-war arrangements, forming a power structure centered on the five major powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and France—through key decisions such as the partitioned occupation of Germany, the establishment of the UN Security Council, and the maintenance of the veto power for major powers. With the formal introduction of the UN Charter, China became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Chinese people won the respect of peace-loving people worldwide and earned a high national reputation. The victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression provided an example for oppressed nations in their struggle for independence and liberation, promoted the development of national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and added a progressive force to human civilization.

The Chinese people have always made significant contributions to promoting world peace and development. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "History warns us that the fate of humanity is shared. Only when all countries and nations treat each other as equals, live together in harmony, and help each other in times of need can we maintain common security, eliminate the root causes of war, and prevent the tragedy of history from repeating itself!" Peace, amity, and harmony are concepts that Chinese civilization has inherited for over five thousand years. The peaceful nature of Chinese civilization fundamentally determines that China will always be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order. From the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to the Global Security Initiative, China has always been a staunch defender of world peace. China holds high the banner of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit, adheres to the foreign policy goals of maintaining world peace and promoting common development, and unswervingly develops friendly cooperation with all countries based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, promoting the construction of a new type of international relations characterized by mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. The Global Security Initiative takes the "Six Commitments" as its core essence: namely, staying committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security; staying committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; staying committed to abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; staying committed to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously; staying committed to peacefully