At a solemn ceremony marking China's V-Day commemorations on Wednesday, British scholar Jenny Clegg joined foreign delegates in honoring China's pivotal role in resisting Japanese aggression, calling for renewed global solidarity amid rising threats to peace.
China held the grand gathering in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. Among the attendees were 50 foreign friends from 14 countries, including contributors to China’s wartime efforts and family members of those who have since passed away.
Jenny Clegg, Vice President of the Society for Anglo-China Understanding and daughter of Arthur Clegg, an organizer of the 1930s China Campaign Committee, spoke of China's early and enduring resistance.
In an interview with China Media Group (CMG), she emphasized that China began its fight against Japanese fascism in 1931, with little to no support from other nations.
"Arthur Clegg spent several years raising people's awareness in Britain of what the Japanese were doing in China, and also raising funds to support the Chinese people's struggle. In China, people fought on, fought on and on. And they did so without the support of the other governments of the world. And it was not until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and took Singapore and Hong Kong that brought the British and the Americans into the war in the Far East. China kept the Japanese forces pinned down in China, so they were unable to open a second front against the Soviet Union, and they were unable to penetrate through Burma and to link up with the fascist regimes through India," said Clegg.
Clegg also highlighted China's commitment to promoting the transformation of international relations and establishing a new type of international relations centered on mutual benefit and win-win results, instead of the old global order based on power or violence.
"We are getting to a precarious moment, and we have this unending war in Ukraine. At the same time we have this horrific genocide in Gaza, we have to keep building international solidarity, internationalism, relations between people which are mutually beneficial. And this is the only way, in the end, that we are going to stop this endless violence, reestablish the United Nations on a stronger basis," she said.
"And we have to understand that shared history, how all the world came together to defeat the naked power and brutality of fascism. And that is the basis on which we build a shared future on that history," she added.
China was the first country to rise against fascist aggression with the longest-lasting resistance that began in 1931. The country tied down and struck over half of Japan's overseas forces, at the cost of 35 million military and civilian casualties -- accounting for around one-third of all World War II casualties worldwide.
Descendant of China's wartime ally calls for international solidarity to safeguard peace
