China commemorates war with Japan

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday commemorated the 77th anniversary of the official start of war with Japan, condemning those who “ignore the iron facts of history” in an oblique jab at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Xi and a cast of hundreds of soldiers and schoolchildren gathered for a ceremony on the edge of the capital to mark the Marco Polo Bridge incident, a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops on July 7, 1937 that served as a pretext for Tokyo’s forces to seize Beijing and trigger the Sino-Japanese war.