As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, a new dimension of conflicting views is opening up among scholars, historians and strategic analysts in Washington and Beijing.

This is the opposing views of China and America on World War II and the meaning for each. A crescendo of interpretation in new books, articles and various arms of propaganda will recount these differences all the way to the centenary in 2039 of the beginning of the European war and the preceding years when China remembers its lonely struggle against Japan.