Numbers tell a story of their own

• Over the 14 years of Japan's invasion and occupation of China, China suffered more than 35 million military and nonmilitary casualties, by some estimates. Military casualties reached 3.8 million, accounting for one-third of the total casualties of all the countries involved in World War II.

• At the exchange rates of 1937, property losses by Chinese people amounted to more than $100 billion, with indirect economic losses of $500 billion.

• Chinese forces killed, wounded and captured more than 1.5 million Japanese troops in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

• At the time of its surrender, Japan had deployed 1.86 million troops in China, accounting for more than half of its total 3.58 million overseas troops.

• China was a massive battlefield. Up to 1938, China and Japan together put more than 4 million soldiers into action in a war zone of approximately 1.6 million square kilometers. More than 400 million people were directly or indirectly involved in the war.