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Experts urge learning lessons from world wars

(Xinhua)    09:16, July 27, 2014
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BEIJING, July 26 -- More than 200 historians on Saturday urged people around the globe to learn lessons from the two world wars and avoid the outbreak of a third one.

Experts from the U.S., Russia, Serbia, German, Japan and other countries held an international conference in Beijing to retrospect the World War I and II ahead of the 100th anniversary of WWI, which falls on Monday.

As in 1914, some traces of the old security concept can still be seen in international affairs in 2014, warned Li Chenggang, associate professor of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

"The U.S. is treating the countries which are rising quickly in a time of globalization as those powers did a century ago in a time of imperialism and realpolitik," he said.

To ensure its own absolute security, the U.S. has frequently carried out military interventions in other countries, resulting in suspicion, envy and hostility among powers, Li added, urging people to avoid the same mistakes as those made 100 years ago.

Historians also warned of the revival of militarism in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies threaten the peace of Japan and lead the country down a dangerous path, said Nakayama Toshio with the Clausewitz Society of Japan.

The Abe Administration's strategy to corner China by aligning with other nations is not only a comeback under the wing of the United States' hegemony, but also a demonstration of the Japan-US alliance in the 21st century that means more than the resurgence of Japanese militarism, he added.

At the conference, Chinese scholars refuted the "China threat theory," which compares emerging China with rising Germany that challenged the Vienna system before World War I.

"The view that China is the challenger to the existing world order is extremely wrong as it didn't, doesn't and won't follow the footsteps of those big powers to seek hegemony once they grew powerful," said Lyu Jie, professor with the Chinese Military Academy.

(Editor:Huang Jin、Bianji)

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