Number of victims in Nanjing Massacre irrefutable

When delivering a speech in Berlin on March 28, President Xi Jinping recalled the atrocities the Japanese military committed when it occupied what was then the Chinese capital Nanjing in 1937, saying that the Nanjing Massacre of more than 300,000 people is still fresh in the memory of all Chinese people.

Tokyo lodged a protest with the Chinese government a day later, and Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed regret calling it "extremely unproductive" for the Chinese leader to comment on Japanese history in a third country. He also said that Tokyo did not deny members of the Japanese military had been involved in the killing and looting, but he disputed the number of victims mentioned by the Chinese side because views on the matter vary.

It is a shame that regarding the number of victims in the Nanjing Massacre, some Japanese politicians have repeatedly quoted the opinions of right-wing scholars to whitewash Japan's war crimes. No matter how desperately they have tried to deny it, evidence of the Nanjing Massacre is iron-clad, and the international community has for decades had a definite conclusion on the number of deaths in the massacre.