Feature: British scholar, diplomat call for more recognition of China's contribution in WWII

As the world is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the victory of anti-fascist war, a leading British scholar and a career diplomat are calling for more recognition of China's contributions to the Allies' victory against Japan in World War II (WWII).

"China lies at the heart of the overall Allied victory during World War II. To sum up: without China, an Allied victory in Asia would have been much harder," said Rana Mitter, director of Oxford University's China Center.

Mitter, professor of history and politics of modern China at Oxford University, is the author of "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945," a critically acclaimed historical account of China's eight-year war of resistance against Japanese aggressors in WWII.

Addressing an audience at the Chinese Embassy in London on Friday, Mitter said the Second World War "might never have happened at all in the way that we know it" if China stopped its resistance against Japanese aggression in the early years of the war.

Hypothesizing an alternative scenario in which China opted out of the war in 1938, one of the worst years of the war, the historian noted: "Japan's forces would also have been freed for an all-out assault on the USSR, Southeast Asia, or even British India."

"The Chinese resistance was holding down 600,000 or more Japanese troops. In the early part of the war, this meant that those troops could therefore not be transferred to the rest of Asia easily," he elaborated.

The West needs to reflect that China's contributions were also crucial to the war effort, and China held down huge numbers of Japanese troops on its territory, the scholar stressed.

China "acted as a beacon to other non-western countries, showing that it was possible to fight with the west and still strongly oppose imperialism," he explained.

Mitter also pointed out that the West did not always understand how the war looked through Chinese eyes, urging that "China's war effort needs to be understood in its own terms, and commemorated for the right reasons."

"China's role profoundly shaped the ultimate outcome of the conflict that is now known as World War II," he concluded.

Gareth Ward, deputy director of Asia-Pacific Directorate and head of China Department at British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said the war in the Asia Pacific region had enormous significance for the United Kingdom and Europe.

"We very much acknowledge the contribution of our Chinese allies and the tremendous material and human costs of the conflict for China," he said.

The career diplomat noted that the Japanese invasions of then British possessions in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, and the campaign fought in Burma (now Myanmar) left tens of thousands of British personnel killed or missing, and many of the British prisoners of war captured by Japan suffered appalling physical and psychological traumas.

"But set against that, the sacrifices the Chinese people made were on an even more terrible scale," he said.

Ward added that the most notable cooperation between Britain and China during the war period was in Burma where China committed some of its best troops and through Burma where the Britain facilitated military supplies to China.

Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to Britain, said China's contribution to the victory of the world's people against the Fascists forces has indelible historic significance.

"To achieve that, the Chinese military and civilians made enormous sacrifice - 35 million casualties. That's about 70 percent of the total population of the UK at the end of World War II," he illustrated.

However, the ambassador argued, for many years very little has been said in Western history and school textbooks about the Chinese people's war of resistance, and the enormous sacrifice and important contribution of the Chinese people "seem to have been overlooked or forgotten by the West."

In recent years, British scholars and historians have begun to revisit and look deeper into that part of the history in WWII.

"That is a gratifying development. And I believe such studies demonstrate an objective and just attitude as well as due respect for the history," Liu said. Endit