A Chinese writer has been ordered to apologize publicly for questioning one of China’s best-known stories of wartime heroism after he lost an appeal in a Beijing court.

In a decision that fell on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court on Monday upheld a libel ruling against the writer, Hong Zhenkuai, for a pair of articles he wrote in 2013 questioning certain details in the “Five Heroes of Langya Mountain.”

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