Chinese newspapers reported several hundred cities would sound their fire alarms on Sept. 18 in memory of the day in 1931 when Japan began a militarily invasion of northeast China.

Organizers say that remembering the day enables the Chinese people to recall their national indignity. Liaoshen Evening, a state-run daily newspaper, reported that the activities, including the sounding of air defense warning and vehicle horns, were advocated three years ago, and several hundred cities are expected to participate this year.

Meanwhile, some analysts pointed out that the history of the past 70 years has been distorted by the Chinese government, to the point that civilians are unaware of the truth of some critical historical events between China and Japan.

Although the invasion of Sept. 18 took place 73 years ago and Japan surrendered to China about 60 years ago, the Chinese enmity toward Japan has apparently not eased, perhaps even becoming stronger. For example, in a recent China-held Asian Cup soccer match, Chinese fans demonstrated hostility towards the Japanese players, causing a diplomatic malaise between the two countries.

The Chinese government insisted that only a few had the extreme nationalism and anti-Japan sentiment. However, the authorities had to send out a large number of police to monitor the soccer match between China and Japan.

Yu Jie, a social reviewer in Beijing, thinks that western media and Japanese newspapers did not assess the Chinese nationalism very accurately. Yu believes that this kind of sentiment shouldn’t be seen as universal or enthusiastic, as claimed by many foreign observers. Instead, with the limited freedom in China, people may just seize an incident to exaggerate matters. Yu said, “This is closely associated with the particular environment of Chinese society, which is not yet free and democratic by far. Chinese civilians have no way to freely express their own concerns through the media. Especially within the past decades, there have been no channels by which they can bring out their criticism and anger against the privileged strata. So, I believe, anti-Japan, or broader anti-Western sentiment rather becomes their vent to get their dissatisfactions off their chest.”

He Liangliang, a Hong Kong news reviewer, believes that Chinese civilians do resent Japan, but that they are most likely intentionally misled by the regime’”. In Chinese history textbooks, for example, the anti-Japanese war was taught as being led by the Chinese Communist Party instead of the KMT. Also, the benefits that the Japanese invasion brought have never been mentioned, although Chairman Mao Tse-tung openly and repeatedly admitted this to the Japanese. He Liangliang says, “When Mainland China established a normal relationship with Japan, Mao, while imploring Japan to reject Taiwan, simply liquidated the war compensation Japan was supposed to give to China. All these issues have not been impartially explained to the Chinese civilians for a long time. I think their hostilities towards Japan are understandable.”

According to Yu Jie, for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, the nationalism is a two-edged sword that could protect or damage themselves. It might bring the people’s attention to the defects existing in the Chinese political systems. On the other hand, there might be some reasons for the Chinese regime to encourage or even motivate nationalism. “I think, since 1989 the Chinese regime has suppressed the freedom movement and people’s ideology has been adjusted. The philosophies such as Marxism-Leninism and communism are entirely losing their attractiveness. With the gunshots in 1989, they have collapsed like soap bubbles. Being in this situation, the Chinese communist party is soliciting new concepts to unify the Chinese society. Nationalism or patriotism seems operable to fill the vacuum left by Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s communism.”

Yu Jie and He Liangliang both agreed that China has some flaws in teaching the modern history of the China-Japan relationship. However, Japan has similar problems. He said, “For example, if you go to Hiroshima visiting the Peace Memorial, you won’t be able to find out why Americans chose Japan to drop two atomic bombs on. Japanese are different from people in other countries in looking at this issue. They feel they deserve sympathy because Japan is the only country ever having experienced an atomic attack. However, they do not talk about what caused Americans to drop the bomb.”

This Sept. 18, Japanese journalists raised the issue regarding the Chinese civilians’ anti-Japan feeling to a spokesperson of the China Foreign Ministry, who replied, “Japan should use history as a guide and mirror and look forward to the future, and cease to do anything harmful to the Chinese people.”