How China’s XXL military parade puts its military and territorial ambitions on show - France24

(...) The parade also reflects Xi's habit of bending history towards political ends. Frans-Paul van der Putten, a specialist in Chinese security at the Netherlands' Clingendael research institute, said that celebrating the victory over Japan was a relatively recent development in China.

"Before 2015, military parades were occasionally held on National Day, which referred back to the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China, but not to 1945," he said. "The V-day parades allow the CCP to highlight its role as leading the country that was one of the four main Allied powers that won World War II, along with the US, USSR and UK – even though the CCP was not in control of the national government at that time." 

(...) Van der Putten said that Western accounts of the global fight against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany regularly downplayed the role that the Chinese people had played in breaking the Japanese war machine.

"In Western representations of World War II, the Chinese contribution to the Allied war effort has often been neglected," he said. "The fact that Western media report about the parade may help somewhat to inform Western audiences about that aspect of the war."

Article by Sébastian Seibt for France24. Click here to read the whole article.