While showcasing military, China announces cuts

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Thursday he would cut troop levels by 300,000 as Beijing held a massive display of military might to commemorate victory over Japan in World War II.

China's confidence in its armed forces and growing military assertiveness, especially in the disputed South China Sea, has rattled the region and drawn criticism from Washington.

Xi, speaking on a rostrum overlooking Beijing's Tiananmen Square before the parade began, said China would cut by 13 percent one of the world's biggest militaries, currently 2.3 million strong.

He gave no time frame for a reduction that is likely part of long-mooted military reforms. Troop numbers have been cut three times before since the 1980s as part of China's efforts to modernize its armed forces.

“Prejudice and discrimination, hatred and war can only cause disaster and pain,” Xi said. “China will always uphold the path of peaceful development.”

He then descended to Beijing's main thoroughfare and inspected rows of troops, riding past them in a black limousine and bellowing repeatedly, “Hello comrades, hard-working comrades!”

More than 12,000 soldiers, mostly Chinese but with contingents from Russia and elsewhere, then began marching down Changan Avenue, led by veterans of World War II carried in vehicles.

The Chinese government insisted the parade was not aimed at today's Japan, but was planned as a reminder to the world of China's huge sacrifices during World War II. However, China rarely misses an opportunity to draw attention to Japan's wartime role.

In a series of statements released by state news agency Xinhua hours before the parade, Xi said that the Japanese invaders were “fiendish.”

“The Japanese militarist invaders were extremely bloody and cruel,” said Xi, adding the Japanese “treated the Chinese people with unprecedented brutality, and tried to use massacres and death to get the Chinese people to yield.”

Analysts have often argued that Chinese leaders continue to bank on the Chinese Communist Party’s self-declared World War II triumph over the Japanese to solidify their mandate, especially in times of domestic unrest.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is intent on expanding Japan's military, was not in attendance. The Japan Times newspaper ran an English-language analysis on Wednesday reporting that the parade was a “chance to distract attention” from China’s flailing economy, amid a stock market crisis — China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite index hit its lowest level since Dec. 15 just days ago —  that some analysts say could eventually affect other sectors, like housing.

Despite official attempts to move past the issue, a long-running dispute over a series of uninhabited islands, known in Chinese as the Diaoyu and in Japanese as the Senakaku, continues to fan the flames of the nations’ political tension.

Al Jazeera and wire services