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Feature: Overseas Chinese mark in Berlin 70th anniversary of Japan defeat

Xinhua, August 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Hundreds of doves flew over Berlin's Potsdam Square on Tuesday, as about 450 overseas Chinese from all over the world met here to commemorate the 70th anniversary of victory of Anti-Japanese war.

Earlier in the day, Chinese Ambassador to Germany Shi Mingde unveiled and then rang the "Potsdam Peace Bell" in Potsdam Square along with Zhang Manxin, chairman of the European branch of China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Unification (CCPPR), Tan Tianxing, deputy director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, and other representatives.

Karl-Heinz Gass, a German who was honored as an "ambassador of friendship of the Chinese people" read inscriptions on the bell to the audience.

"On July 26, 1945, the Potsdam Declaration or the proclamation defining terms for Japanese surrender of China, the United States and the United Kingdom was solemnly published. It reiterated to the world that the 'Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine,' as had been announced in the Cairo Declaration in 1943," he read.

According to organizers, overseas Chinese in Europe raised money to build the nearly two-meter-tall bronze "Potsdam Peace Bell" to mark the 70th anniversary of the release of the "Potsdam Proclamation."

Carved in German, English and Chinese, inscriptions on the bell attracted the attention of passersby in Potsdam Square.

Ambassador Shi said in his speech at a conference in Berlin that commemorating in Berlin the 70th anniversary of victory of Anti-Japanese war and Anti-Fascist War has a special significance.

He said that 70 years after World War II, Germany regained the trust and respect of European countries by seriously reflecting on war crimes, which made great contribution to peace and prosperity in post-war Europe and to the European integration construction.

"We also hope that our neighbor country could take history as a mirror and Germany as an example to reflect on war disasters that it has caused for China and other Asian countries, including their people, and to take concrete actions to safeguard the postwar international order, and to truly embark on a path of peace," he said. Endit