Thirty-five million. That's the estimated number of Chinese military and civilian casualties as a result of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. 

Japan invaded northeast China in 1931. It launched a full-scale invasion six years later that made China the first country to be invaded by a fascist state in the Second World War. And China was the first to fight back.

According to "A Brief Introduction to the History of Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" published by the People's Publishing House, when China began the national war of resistance, it was up against two-thirds of Japan's land forces and much of its naval and air forces.

"China managed to tie down hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in Asia while America was invaded at the Pacific, so the most important is China didn't surrender to the Japanese invaders – that's one of the most important contributions to the victory," said Aaron Moore, a lecturer at Manchester University in Britain.

Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr believes "no country suffered more than China in the Second World War." China was battling a stronger enemy. By some estimates, 1.5 million Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. But the resistance efforts defeated the Japanese plan to take China in three months and further expand into the rest of Asia. It also gained time for the allies on the European battlefield to defeat Germany and Italy.

"If Japan and Germany united to defeat the Soviet Union, then the United States might withdraw from the war, and Churchill would know very well that Britain could not survive without the help of the United States," Hans Van De Ven, professor of East Asian studies at the University of Cambridge, says. 

More than that, in 1942, some 100,000 Chinese troops were sent to Myanmar – then known as Burma, saving more than 7,000 British soldiers from Japanese prison camps. About 200,000 Chinese soldiers sacrificed their lives there.

On September 3, 2015, China held a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two. It was at that event, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China planned to cut 300,000 troops from the People's Liberation Army. He added that the aim of the move is peace.