China remembers Nanjing massacre

Dec 13 - China commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre with sirens and bells.

China marked 70 years since Japan's infamous Nanjing massacre, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship.

The six-week wave of killings by invading Japanese troops overrunning Nanjing was among the bloodiest episodes of Japan's invasion of China, taking 300,000 lives according to official Chinese accounts.

For China, how Japan remembers the "Rape of Nanking" -- as the city was then called in English -- has become a defining test of how contrite its neighbour is about its brutal occupation of much of the country from the 1930s up to 1945.