China should adopt a more "truthful and responsible" attitude on the history of the Sino-Japanese war, giving more credit to the Kuomintang and the US for their contribution to the victory, says a People's Liberation Army general and historian.

Shao Weizheng said at a weekend conference that Beijing should recognise American support during the war and stop playing down the positive wartime role of the Nationalist government, a long-time rival of the Communist Party.

"The Chinese people have been told little about the contribution of the US-led allied forces to China during the war against the Japanese invasion for various reasons, including some artificial ones," said General Shao. "We should be able to look at that period of history more clearly and objectively after several decades. We must recover the original history now."

Citing former premier Zhou Enlai , he said that if basic facts could not be clarified before publication, it would be meaningless to talk about historical truth.

General Shao earned his fame through his research on the first Communist Party congress, details of which had been a mystery since the 1920s.

His views were echoed by Lieutenant-General Mi Zhenyu and more than 20 other mainland speakers at the talks on Sino-US co-operation during the war, co-hosted by the China Society for Strategy and Management Research, and the US embassy in Beijing.