Interview: Ukrainian historian hails China's role in WWII, contribution to world peace

A Ukrainian historian has spoken highly of China's contribution to the fight against fascist forces seven decades ago and its current role as a defender of world peace.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Friday, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II (WWII), Oleksiy Koval called China's resistance against Japanese invasion an example of the nation's struggle for freedom.

"China's resistance to Japanese aggression can be called one of the most heroic and tragic pages of World War II," said the expert, who is also a member of Ukrainian Sinologists Association.

During the conflict, Chinese people showed exceptional courage and made an enormous national sacrifice, he said.

For its victory, China lost tens of millions of lives during the period starting from 1931, when the Japanese first attacked northeast China, to 1945, Koval said.

A total of 35 million Chinese people were killed or wounded in the bloodiest conflict the world has ever known. The Japanese military invasion also destroyed many Chinese villages, cities and industrial facilities.

But despite all the destruction, the Chinese nation has managed to revive its economy, and thus can serve as an example of revival for other nations, Koval said.

Koval called for efforts to study the significance of China's contribution to the resistance against fascism to better understand history and learn lessons from the conflict.

He spoke highly of China's steady adherence to the path of peaceful development, saying the Chinese nation's self-consciousness and peace-loving cultural tradition have enabled the country to help maintain world peace and promote its own economic growth.

"China has managed to avoid risky undertakings, which could lead to the outbreak of major conflicts. This fact certainly had a positive impact on the attitude to China from the neighboring countries and allowed China to build a new type of economy," the expert said.

He hailed Beijing's well-reasoned and transparent military policy and respectable attitude to the world order after WWII, saying that China has proved to be a country committed to preserving world peace and defusing conflicts.

China is one of the few countries that have summed up the experience of resistance against aggression and become aware that peace, respect and win-win spirit are the core principles of international relations, the historian said.

"After WWII, which was the bloodiest conflict in the history, our world and the humanity in general need to understand that conflicts between countries can not be solved through war and violence, but should be solved through peaceful means," Koval said. Endi