China's lessons from WWII endure

Tomorrow, China will stage a grand military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

- Jiang Tao

From fighter jets to hypersonic missiles, many of the People's Liberation Army's most advanced technologies will be unveiled for the first time. Alongside traditional weaponry, a new generation of drones, carrier-based aircraft, robotic dogs, unmanned ground vehicles and counter-drone systems will also be on display.

It is almost unimaginable that in the 1930s and 1940s, China resisted Japanese militarism with little more than rifles - and sometimes even broadswords. Yet with such rudimentary arms, the Chinese people waged a heroic resistance, ultimately crushing Japan's imperial ambitions at the cost of at least 35 million military and civilian lives. From a global perspective, China's resistance fundamentally altered the trajectory of the wider Anti-Fascist War - blocking Japan's designs to strike north against the Soviet Union or south into the Pacific. Shoulder to shoulder with the Allies, China made immense contributions to the eventual defeat of fascism.