China's Foreign Ministry confirmed, in a roundabout way, today that it had issued an invitation to wartime enemy Japan to attend events in China to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II later this year.
Sino-Japan 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 it 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 Beijing to try to reset relations.
"As to which countries leaders have been invited, we have said this many times: China has already issued invites to all relevant countries' leaders and international organisations," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.
She did not elaborate, and the government has so far released few details about the events.
While China has continued to remind Japan it expects them to face up to their wartime past, the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and China agreed on Saturday that a summit meeting of their leaders should be held soon to mend ties.
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