China has every reason to celebrate victory

Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye will pay a three-day visit to China from Sept 2 to attend the celebrations in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. On Sept 4, she is scheduled to visit Shanghai to re-open the office of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, which was set up by some Korean independence fighters in 1919, nine years after Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula.

But the commemorative activities in China, along with the Victory Day parade in Moscow about three months ago, have been used to speculate that China and Russia are forging an "anti-West alliance". Skeptics even cite the ongoing China-Russia naval drills in the Peter the Great Gulf and other areas off the Russian coast as "solid evidence" of the building up of such an alliance.

Worse, a recent editorial in the London-based Economist magazine said China's Sept 3 parade "is not just about remembrance"; it will "unsettle" its neighbors, as the country "plays up themes of historical victimhood and the need to correct" them.