[jyl]

My theory: China is stoking the nationalistic and militaristic fires in its population, because it perceives more conflict, including military conflict, ahead. The traditional stories of Mao’s army defeating the Kuomingtang government aren’t enough, because future military conflict will be against foreign countries. So they dust off the last time China fought a foreign power (ignore the skimishes with India, those aren’t impressive enough). The Japanese are a perfect villain for many reasons. They can gloss over the fact that these Chinese soldiers are actually the ones who fought the CCP a few years later. The government has such control over media, online communications, even private interactions, that they can suppress discussion of that inconvenient detail.