Newsletter

Lugou Bridge (盧溝橋) is an arch stone bridge over the Yongding River (永定河) that flows southeast of the city of Beijing, China. Completed in 1192 during the Jin Dynasty, the bridge is about 270 meters in length, and has 510 lion statues of different shapes standing along the parapets. Lugou Bridge is also known as Marco Polo Bridge, which originates from The Travels of Marco Polo where Marco Polo described it as "a wonderful stone bridge that can't be found anywhere else."

The Lugou Bridge Incident Triggers the Second Sino-Japanese War

The Lugou Bridge Incident refers to the conflict that occurred between the Japanese Army and the Chinese Kuomintang Army seventy-seven years ago on July 7, 1937. In 1931, the confrontation between China and Japan began to intensify in the wake of the Manchurian Incident (9/18 Incident), a staged event engineered by the Japanese Kwantung Army, and the foundation of a puppet state called Machukuo. Amid this tension, a shot rang out near Lugou Bridge, which incident ended up escalating into the Second Sino-Japanese War. In China, this incident is referred to as the July 7 Incident, for it occurred on the 7th day of July, or the Lugou Bridge Incident. In Japan, it was once referred to as the China Incident. The term 'incident' was used because it had started without either country declaring war against the other. Once the declaration of war was made afterwards by the Chongqing Government of Jiang Jieshi in December 1941, Japan included the incident as part of the Greater East Asia War by a cabinet decision.

Following the Luguo Bridge Incident, the Japanese army occupied Beijing and Tianjin, and attacked Shanghai and then Nanjing, where they committed the Najing Massacre, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens. As the Japanese army occupied major provinces and most cities in China, the war spread across China and continued until they surrendered to the Republic of China in 1945.

Today, right in front of Luguo Bridge, there stands the Museum of the War of the Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which was opened to the public in 1987, fifty years after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and exhibits about 5,000 relics related to war history from the 1931 Manchurian Incident to China's victory in 1945.

In 1995, the Japanese government issued the Murayama Statement that expressed the feelings of remorse and apology for its colonial rule. Nevertheless, in August 2001, the then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine, facing strong opposition from China. In response, in October in the same year, he visited this museum and wrote the Chinese characters "zhong shu (忠恕)," a term from the Analects of Confucius meaning "wholehearted sincerity and forgiveness and sympathy for others."

In February 2014, China designated September 3 as the Victory Day of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, among other official days to mark war victory. And on July 7 in the same year, to coincide with the day of the Luguo Bridge Incident, President Xi Jinping paid a visit to the Museum of the War of the Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. This is very exceptional because it was not the Chinese Communist Party's army but the 19th Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang that had fought the Japanese army on Lugou Bridge. President Xi paid another visit to this museum on September 3, 2014 on the occasion of "the 69th anniversary of China's victory in its War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the world's victory in the Anti-Fascist War." The event on that day was honored with the presence of all the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China offering flowers, and it laid a solid foundation for the preparation of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the "victory in the war of resistance against Japanese aggression" in 2015.