Peking University, November 4, 2025: Close to 100 distinguished scholars gathered at Peking University (PKU) on November 2 and 3 for an international symposium that had put into global perspective the significance of China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and Taiwan’s restoration to China.



This symposium featured keynote speeches, 20 panel sessions, and a roundtable discussion, drawing scholars from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, as well as countries such as the United States, Britain and Japan. 

Delivering the opening remarks, He Guangcai, Chair of the PKU Council, highlighted that deepening research into World War II has seen more international scholars reevaluate China’s contribution to World Anti-Fascist War as the main theater in Asia. 

He then reaffirmed PKU’s commitment to boosting exchanges across Taiwan Strait by forging partnerships with higher education institutions in Taiwan and hosting academic symposiums.

“This symposium is a platform for us to remember the joint fight for freedom unfolding across the Taiwan Strait…The examination of this period of history gives us impetus to make cohesive efforts to push forward the great cause of national reunification.”

Zhang Baijia, Research Fellow at the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, provided an abstract of the decades-spanning research on China’s War of Resistance, dividing it into four periods, and saying that each period featured deeper analysis than the last. 



“The tortuous journey of China’s war of resistance lasted the longest among the major theaters of World War II, carrying far-reaching implications for the World Anti-Fascist War.”

He stressed the importance of having frequent academic exchanges, saying that they serve to heal the wounds of war and facilitate mutual understanding.

Lu Fang-sang, Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, delved into the suffering the war had caused to the Chinese people. He said that China’s war of resistance greatly facilitated the World Anti-Fascist War, but had largely been glossed over in the global discourse, though recent years had seen more international scholars reexamine this subject.



He quoted the historian Lloyd E Eastman as saying that China’s victory in World War II was a miracle forged by will and self-reliance, as China was largely a poor agrarian country and received little foreign aid.

Hans van de Ven gave an overall view of the political entanglement among Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States during World War II, recapping Japan’s aggression on Dutch East Indies and America’s “Europe-First” strategy under the Roosevelt administration.

He is Visiting Chair Professor at the Department of History, Peking university; Professor of Modern Chinese History, University of Cambridge; and Fellow of the British Academy.

Liu Wei-kai, Professor of History at Chengchi University in Taipei, gave a detailed account of the process of Taiwan’s restoration before and after 1945, stressing on the point that this achievement was a historical inevitability effected by shared struggles across the Strait.

Liu Wei-kai

Weili Ye, Professor of History at University of Massachusetts Boston, expounded on the historical significance of the December 9th movement. This bottom-up student-led movement projected the strength of Chinese youth onto the world stage and galvanized China’s fight against fascism, she said.



The panel sessions and the roundtable discussion focused on various aspects of this period of wartime history, covering economics, culture, academia, law and order, etc. Peking University aims to build through this symposium a platform for high-level academic exchanges that serve to enrich knowledge on history and builds cohesion across the Taiwan Strait.

Written by: Chen Shizhuo
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
Photo by: Li Xianghua, Yan Linlin, Huang Zhe