Major General Cheng Xiangwen (Left) and Major General Zhu Yunxuan (right) salute during a session with soldiers from their marching unit on July 22, 2015. They are preparing for the Sept 3 military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. [Photo/Agencies]

China's decision to hold a military parade on Sept 3 to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II serves important domestic and global purposes.

Domestically, the idea is to rally the Chinese people around a new shared national history, one constructed around the joint resistance against foreign invasion and the struggle to create a new modern, prosperous and cohesive nation. And the display of military hardware is meant to suggest that China has the military wherewithal befitting a great power and can keep its people safe, important because China for almost two centuries suffered defeat after defeat and invasion after invasion.

Globally, the commemoration is meant to draw attention to China's role in WWII, illustrating that it played as important a role as the US, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and that China, too, stood on the side of the good. Although in the West China's role in WWII still receives little attention, in China it is now seen as one of the most crucial periods in its history.

Japan surrendered its forces in China not on Sept 3, 1945, but on Sept 9, 1945, in Nanjing at 9 am. The timing - the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month - echoed that of the end of WWI, when the armistice that had been agreed began on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a moment still commemorated around the world with a minute's silence and meant to suggest the peace won in 1945 would last forever.

China's choice of 9-9-9 in 1945 was apt especially because the Chinese words for "nine" and "enduring" sound similar. Chiang Kai-shek, then China's leader, declared that China's policy would be "to repay aggression with generosity". It is important to recall that initial response for its yearning for reconciliation and insistence on benevolence.