Anzac Day message from Australia leader calls for bolstered military with eye on China

Canberra, Australia — Hundreds of thousands of Australians gathered at dawn services and veterans' street marches across the nation on Tuesday to commemorate their war dead on Anzac Day as recent events focused minds on the cost of war and the new threat of China's rapid military buildup.

Australia and New Zealand commemorate Anzac Day every April 25 — the date in 1915 when the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, in northwest Turkey, in an ill-fated campaign that was the soldiers' first combat of World War I.