Event in China Marks Date of Nanjing Incident; Xi Jinping Absent from Ceremony for Seventh Year

By Miho Tamura / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

16:34 JST, December 14, 2024

NANJING — With Friday marking 87 years since the 1937 Nanjing Incident by the former Japanese military, an event was held at the “Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders” to commemorate the national memorial day established in China in 2014. Although this year marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the national day, Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend the ceremony, making this the seventh consecutive year he has been absent.

Li Shulei, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo who attended the event in Nanjing on behalf of the Xi administration, said, “We will remember history and cherish peace,” and emphasized that the two countries “need to build stable relations.”

The Japanese Embassy in Beijing and other organizations had been calling on Japanese residents in China to exercise caution, saying that anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese people would likely increase around this time. According to sources involved in Japan-China relations, all Japanese schools in China had closed or switched to online classes on Friday as a safety measure for students.