China Introduces Two Anti-Japanese Holidays

With the annual meeting of China’s parliament about to begin in smoggy Beijing, the Chinese government is in desperate need of a distraction. The pollution in the capital has been especially thick over the past week, obscuring the city’s skycrapers just as delegates from all over the country arrive for the opening of the National People’s Congress. The country’s pollution has become “unbearable,” Li Junfeng, director general of the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, said at a conference in Beijing on Sunday.

So what better time for the Chinese government to ramp up its campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an enemy even more despised than smog? China has been feuding with Abe since he took office in late 2012, with the rhetoric between the two sides becoming increasingly vitriolic. Now China is taking its anti-Japanese campaign to a new level. One item on the agenda this week for lawmakers at the National People’s Congress will be a proposal to commemorate the country’s long and ultimately victorious fight against the Japanese Empire in World War II.