Plans for Military Parade in Beijing Stir Bitter War Memories

If history is written by the victors, China should be is in a good position to mold the account of winning over Japan in World War II. But the Civil War in the following years muddies the narrative because the Nationalists, who led the fighting against the Japanese, became the defeated at the hands of the Communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949. The Communists now claim to control the past as well as the future. A military parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory on September 3 has become a crude play of memory politics.