China will hold a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II this year and invite the leaders of major countries involved in the war to attend, the Foreign Ministry said, events probably aimed at Japan.
Sino-Japanese relations have long been poisoned by what China sees as Japan's failure to atone for its occupation of parts of the country before and during the war, and Beijing rarely misses an opportunity to remind its people and the world of this.
In the last two years, ties have also deteriorated sharply because of a dispute over a chain of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, though Chinese and Japanese leaders met last year in the capital, Beijing, to try to reset relations.