Interview: China's war against Japan significant to WWII victory: Cambridge professor

China's war of resistance against Japanese aggression was very important for the world to win the anti-Fascist war 70 years ago, and more and more Western experts attach great significance to China's contributions to World War II (WWII) victory, a leading historian at Cambridge University has said.

China's war not only foiled Japan's strategy to dominate Asia and its ambition to establish a Japan-led East Asian order, but also helped end Western countries' imperialism in the region, Hans van de Ven, a history professor and director of the College of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Van de Ven, one of the renowned Western scholars intrigued by China's resistance against Japan, is also a forerunner in studying the military aspect of the history.

"So many history books about WWII mainly came from American and British historians, who played down China's role in WWII. They think that the United States launched offensives against Japan across the Pacific to win the war and China had little to do with the victory. So it's not difficult to understand why they hold that China's war against Japan was insignificant to the world," he said.

"However, such an understanding of China's role in WWII is unfair and incorrect. It is a U.S.-centered historical view," he said.

In his book "War and Nationalism in China (1925-1945)," Van de Ven dwells on details of China's resistance, as well as the roles played by the country's Nationalists and Communists in the war.

In his opinion, the fact that China's war of resistance was largely ignored by the West has much to do with the Western assessments of China's pursuit of the war.

Despite China's contribution to WWII, van de Ven noted, the war efforts of the Chinese troops had not been taken seriously by the allies. "China is a serious and major component of the Second World War" and its role in the conflict needs to be "reassessed," he said.

"The Chinese people's suffering, injuries, torture and sacrifice during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression were much different from those of other countries, and cannot be assessed just in the Western historical perspective and values," stressed the scholar.

"Western historians used to evaluate China's role in WWII from the U.S.-dominated view of history. My suggestion is that we must study the war history from China's perspective and angle," he said. "Actually, the biggest change in global assessment of China's role in WWII is that more and more Western experts and scholars begin to recognize China's war of resistance against Japanese aggression as a vital turning point in the Chinese history, and more and more people turn to analyze this war."

"On the one hand, we urge that the Western academic circles must rethink and revalue China's history and contribution during the war. On the other hand, we also hope that China finds its own characteristics and special circumstances in the history," said the professor.

Meanwhile, the victory of China's war of resistance against Japanese aggression also laid a solid foundation for the Communist Party of China to win the subsequent civil war and set up the new China. If there were not the victory of the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, it would be impossible to establish a new China, he added. Endi