China stresses anti-fascist role in WWII

BEIJING - Scholars on Tuesday used historical facts and figures to show China's great loss of life and property in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and stress the country's anti-fascist role in WWII.

"Chinese forces killed, wounded and captured over 1.5 million Japanese troops in the Anti-Japanese War," Wang Jianlang, director of the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told a press conference.

Over the course of 14 years of war, China suffered a total of over 35 million military and non-military casualties, with military casualties reaching more than 3.8 million, which accounted for a third of the total casualties of all the countries in the WWII, Wang said.

The official property loss suffered by the Chinese people was valued at more than 100 billion dollars, using the exchange rate of 1937, he said, adding the indirect economic losses reached "as high as 500 billion dollars."