Should the US join China's WWII event?

The latest Victory Day parade in Moscow marking the 80th anniversary of Germany's independence defeat in May will be bookended in the upcoming September with a commemorative parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing marking the defeat of Japan.

- Philip Cunningham

Of the “Big Five” victor nations, only the leaders of China and Russia will be on the rostrum, with no confirmed plans for US, UK or French leaders to attend.

Two leading Chinese opinion leaders, Jin Canrong of Renmin University, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Wang Xiangwei, former editor of the South China Morning Post, have suggested that China should invite the US to join the event at Tiananmen. This tantalising possibility was flagged by internet maven Wang Zichen in his Pekingnology newsletter

Nice try, guys. This is a bold gesture at a time of immense diplomatic turmoil, a time when it's worth a try to think out of the box, but it’s unlikely to work.

Any gathering at which Vladimir Putin is party to will project mixed messages and crossed signals at odds with the spirit of the original victory against global fascism.

Winners of the war never tire of the narrative that Germany and Japan were the bad guys, on the wrong side of history, but both those countries have transformed themselves beyond recognition.

The Soviet Union and the United States emerged triumphant in 1945, of course, with immense leverage between them in shaping the peace of the postwar world order.

But the fleeting solidarity enjoyed in that moment of victory was frittered away as the two very different nations turned competitors, contenders and Cold War adversaries in the rush to determine who controlled what and where and on whose terms.

China was on the winning side, but its legacy is most pronounced as a victim nation. Its losses under Imperial Japanese aggression were among the most catastrophic in history, with estimates of 35 million dead or more, and while it is natural that China should want to celebrate the moment that the horror of Japanese occupation ended, China did not end it.