More than 30 foreign government officials and heads of state including Russia's President Vladimir Putin and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attended the event.

But many Western leaders and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have stayed away.

Some 12,000 troops and 200 aircraft, as well as tanks and missiles, were on display in Tiananmen Square, including the anti-ship "carrier killer" missile Dongfeng-21D....

Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937 and, according to Beijing, eight years of fighting claimed 14 million Chinese lives.

China also claims that it is the "forgotten ally" and that its role in defeating Japan has been underplayed in the post-war narrative.

Nationalist forces led the fight against Japan in China. They were defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists who proclaimed a people's republic in 1949.