The journalism teacher called the 300,000 deaths tally a “rough estimate that lacked statistical support” and pointed out that historical estimates range from “thousands” to 500,000 people killed in the Second Sino-Japanese War massacre.

She said that the number should be easy to calculate, but neither the Republic of China, the ruling government during that period, nor the Chinese Communist Party, who has ruled China since 1949, bothered to investigate thoroughly.

According to the video, which went viral, Song said, “the Japanese army did do something inhumane in Nanjing, but I think we need to study why they could do such horrible things.”

“We should not always be immersed in hatred. Instead, we should remember this page in history and think about how this war came to be,” she continued.

In its announcement, the Shanghai college said Song “made the wrong comments” and “made a major teaching accident that created a negative social influence”. Therefore, the school said, it decided to fire her.

On the same day, Gao Weijia, a staff member from Qingdao University, had her teaching licence revoked and was transferred to a non-teaching post after publishing an opinion on Weibo last week that argued young people should “feel free to visit the Yasukuni Shrine”.

The Yasukuni Shrine is a highly controversial monument honouring Japanese soldiers killed in wars since the 19th century. It contains the memorials of convicted war criminals and is viewed in China and South Korea as a reminder of Japan’s history of brutal military imperialism.

Gao made the point that various generations in China have viewed Sino-Japanese history through different lenses.

She wrote, “our generation should feel free to visit” and pointed out that it is less controversial for the older generations who had a closer connection to Japan’s imperial past.

Instead, the younger generation, especially celebrity fans, see the shrine as so taboo that they do not even use the Chinese characters when writing about the Yasukuni Shrine. Instead, they type it out in pinyin, the romanised text of the Chinese language.

The comments came under a few lines in support of Chinese actor Zhang Zhehan, who was blacklisted by authorities earlier this year after photos emerged of him posing amid cherry blossoms outside the shrine in Tokyo back in 2018.

A large number of people were furious with Gao after the university acknowledged a complaint made about the post, claiming she was trying to whitewash Japanese war crimes in China.

“Following her logic, the Chinese foreign ministry lacks national confidence by denouncing visits to the shrine? So it is an act of confidence to worship those ‘ghosts’, and an act of fear not to?” wrote one person on Weibo.