Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-21
By: CNA
Taiwan and China are staging a series of activities to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of
Ma Ying-jeou speaks at the opening of two photo exhibits on the war in Taipei, July 8. (Photo/Chen Chun-wei)
the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the retrocession of Taiwan, which had been ceded to Japan in 1895 after the Qing Dynasty was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894.
Since its establishment in 1949 after winning China’s civil war, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has inflated the role of Communist forces in resisting Japanese aggression while minimizing the role of the Republic of China Nationalist government forces.
It was not until 2005 that the PRC even acknowledged the role played by Nationalists (the Kuomintang) in the war when then PRC president Hu Jintao said KMT and Communist Party forces both contributed to victory over Japan by fighting the enemy on and behind the front lines, respectively.
The PRC’s campaign to control the narrative of the war is just another area in which Taiwan and China compete. After the KMT lost the Chinese civil war, the Republic of China was moved to Taiwan and remains Taiwan’s official name today. [FULL STORY]
