Chinese officials struck a tempered tone on the 80th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre on Wednesday, saying China would ‘look forward’ and deepen friendship with its neighbor Japan despite historical misgivings. Chinese President Xi Jinping led a citywide minute of silence.

China’s ruling Communist Party has often allowed anti-Japanese sentiment to build domestically, but relations have improved in recent months.

China’s government and a 1946 international postwar tribunal say at least 200,000 civilians were killed by Japanese troops in a weeks-long frenzy of murder, rape and arson after Nanking — China’s capital at the time — fell on Dec. 13, 1937, after bitter street fighting in Shanghai.

Some right-wing Japanese politicians, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened.

Wearing a white flower on his lapel, Xi watched somberly on Wednesday as Chinese soldiers bearing large funeral wreaths marched slowly past a memorial showing the figure 300,000 — the number of massacre victims, according to official Chinese estimates.

Nanking, an ancient Chinese capital 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Shanghai, is now commonly known as Nanjing.