Taiwan says Beijing is reshaping World War Two history after Xi Jinping and Donald Trump praised the US-China wartime alliance at last week’s summit. Taipei says the Republic of China fought alongside the Allies and fears Beijing’s account could weaken US support.
Beijing says communist guerrilla forces were the “backbone” of wartime fighting in China, while its official history gives little mention to Republican forces. Taiwan argues the Republic of China was China’s government during the war. Its government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists. Mainland Affairs Council deputy head Shen Yu-chung said Taipei would continue telling Washington that the ROC was its steadfast ally.
The history is also contested within Taiwan: the island was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party champions a separate Taiwanese identity and history. The opposition Kuomintang, the ROC’s governing party during the war, said President Lai Ching-te’s government invokes pre-1949 ROC history when convenient to confront Beijing and compete over the historical narrative, and accused it of criticizing Beijing for political expediency.
