Children hold candles as part of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre in Nanjing December 13, 2007. China marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking", on Thursday, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)
BEIJING, December 13 (Reuters) - China marked the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre on Wednesday with a call to work with Japan for peace, but President Xi Jinping kept a low profile and left the public remarks to another senior official.
China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in its then capital.
A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all.
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Chinese soldiers attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre in Nanjing December 13, 2007. China marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking", on Thursday, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)[/caption]
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A visitor looks at a display of human bones in a new section of the Nanjing Massacre memorial in Nanjing December 13, 2007. China marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking", on Thursday, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)[/caption]
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Eighty-two-year old Zhu Xiu Zen, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre, attends a ceremony marking the event's 70th anniversary in Nanjing December 13, 2007. China marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking", on Thursday, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_324463" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
Chinese soldiers and other people attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre in Nanjing December 13, 2007. China marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking", on Thursday, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)[/caption]
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Journalists and visitors look at skeletons of victims of the 1937 Nanjing massacre at the Nanjing Massacre Museum during a media trip, in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, February 19, 2014. China pressed a propaganda campaign against Japan this week with a guided visit to the site of the 1937 Nanjing massacre, holding up proof to refute doubts by some in Japan about the extent of the atrocity or even that it happened at all. China's ties with Japan have long been poisoned by what China sees as Japan's failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during World War Two. China is determined to sustain the memories. To match story CHINA-JAPAN/NANJING Picture taken February 19, 2014. REUTERS/Aly Song (CHINA - Tags: POLITICS CONFLICT CIVIL UNREST MEDIA SOCIETY)[/caption]
Ties between China and Japan, the world's second- and third-largest economies, have been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea islets and suspicion in China about efforts by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to amend Japan's pacifist constitution.
However the two countries have sought to get relations back on track, and Abe and Xi met last month on the sidelines of a regional summit in Vietnam.
Speaking at a memorial in the eastern city of Nanjing, Yu Zhengsheng, who heads a high profile but largely ceremonial advisory body to China's parliament, said China and Japan were neighbours with deep historic ties.
China will deepen relations with all its neighbours, including Japan, on the basis of amity, sincerity and friendship, Yu said, in comments carried live on state television.
"China and Japan must act on the basis of both their people's basic interests, correctly grasp the broad direction of peaceful and friendly cooperation, take history as a mirror, face the future and pass on friendship down the generations," Yu said.
A sombre Xi, wearing a white flower in his lapel to symbolise mourning, stood in the audience but did not speak.
Doves to signify peace flew overhead once Yu finished speaking.
It was the second time Xi has attended the event since as the country marked its first national memorial day for the massacre in 2014. At that time he did speak, calling on China and Japan to set aside hatred and not allow the minority who led Japan to war to affect relations now.
