Taiwan is pushing back against what it sees as Beijing's attempt to rewrite the history of World War Two, after Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump publicly highlighted the wartime alliance between their countries at a summit last week, according to a Reuters report by Ben Blanchard.
At their state dinner in Washington on Thursday, both leaders lauded the way their nations fought together in the war. A White House fact sheet issued after the summit said Trump and Xi recalled that the United States and China "were allies in World War Two and fought side by side to win the war". That framing has rattled Taipei, which fears Washington could be drawn toward Beijing's version of history — potentially weakening support from its most important arms supplier.
Taiwan's objection is straightforward: it was the Republic of China that stood alongside the Allies at the time, not the People's Republic of China. The ROC government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists and retains its formal name to this day. Beijing, by contrast, maintains that communist guerrilla forces acted as the "backbone" of the fighting in China, and its official history gives little mention to the Republican forces.
Shen Yu-chung, deputy head of Taiwan's China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council, said Xi is "continuously trying to guide the World War Two historical narrative to be led by the People's Republic of China". Taiwan, he added, will keep conveying its message to the United States so that it "correctly understands that during the entire World War Two process, the Republic of China was America's steadfast ally". Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu was blunter, accusing Beijing of trying to overwrite the "true history". "China is trying to replace the Republic of China's role during World War Two," he said. "I think this is something we should feel very sad about."
Neither the White House, the US State Department nor China's Taiwan Affairs Office responded to requests for comment.
The dispute has a longer fuse. During last year's 80th anniversary of the war's end, the de facto US embassy in Taipei accused China of spreading "false" World War Two narratives to pressure Taiwan. Chen Fang-yu, an associate professor at Taipei's Soochow University, told a forum on Sunday that Taiwan must reckon with China's "enormous propaganda resources" and its efforts to influence American public opinion. Even within Taiwan, the legacy is contested: the island was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, and the opposition Kuomintang — the ROC's wartime ruling party — accused President Lai Ching-te's government of invoking the 1945 Republic of China only when it is politically convenient for confronting Beijing.
Sources:
Reuters via ThePrint: Taiwan Pushes Back After Xi Seeks to Win Over Trump on World War Two Narrative
At their state dinner in Washington on Thursday, both leaders lauded the way their nations fought together in the war. A White House fact sheet issued after the summit said Trump and Xi recalled that the United States and China "were allies in World War Two and fought side by side to win the war". That framing has rattled Taipei, which fears Washington could be drawn toward Beijing's version of history — potentially weakening support from its most important arms supplier.
Taiwan's objection is straightforward: it was the Republic of China that stood alongside the Allies at the time, not the People's Republic of China. The ROC government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists and retains its formal name to this day. Beijing, by contrast, maintains that communist guerrilla forces acted as the "backbone" of the fighting in China, and its official history gives little mention to the Republican forces.
Shen Yu-chung, deputy head of Taiwan's China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council, said Xi is "continuously trying to guide the World War Two historical narrative to be led by the People's Republic of China". Taiwan, he added, will keep conveying its message to the United States so that it "correctly understands that during the entire World War Two process, the Republic of China was America's steadfast ally". Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu was blunter, accusing Beijing of trying to overwrite the "true history". "China is trying to replace the Republic of China's role during World War Two," he said. "I think this is something we should feel very sad about."
Neither the White House, the US State Department nor China's Taiwan Affairs Office responded to requests for comment.
The dispute has a longer fuse. During last year's 80th anniversary of the war's end, the de facto US embassy in Taipei accused China of spreading "false" World War Two narratives to pressure Taiwan. Chen Fang-yu, an associate professor at Taipei's Soochow University, told a forum on Sunday that Taiwan must reckon with China's "enormous propaganda resources" and its efforts to influence American public opinion. Even within Taiwan, the legacy is contested: the island was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, and the opposition Kuomintang — the ROC's wartime ruling party — accused President Lai Ching-te's government of invoking the 1945 Republic of China only when it is politically convenient for confronting Beijing.
Sources:
Reuters via ThePrint: Taiwan Pushes Back After Xi Seeks to Win Over Trump on World War Two Narrative
