By Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan criticised Russia and China on Friday for distorting World War Two history, saying Chinese communist forces made “no substantial contribution” to fighting Japan and instead took the opportunity to expand their own forces.
Taiwan has this year sought to cast the war as a lesson to China in why aggression will end in failure, reminding the world it was not the government in Beijing that won the war.
The Chinese government at the time was the Republic of China, part of the U.S., British and Russian-led alliance, and its forces did much of the fighting against Japan, putting on pause a bitter civil war with Mao Zedong’s Communists whose military also fought the Japanese.
The republican government then fled to Taiwan in 1949 after finally being defeated by Mao, and Republic of China remains the democratic island’s official name.
Responding to comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Chinese President Xi Jinping that the war was won under the leadership of China’s communist party, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said it was the Republic of China government and people who fought and ultimately won.
“The Chinese communists only took the opportunity to expand and consolidate communist forces, and made no substantial contribution to the war of resistance, let alone ‘leading’ the war of resistance,” it said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Xi is in Moscow to attend Friday’s military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.
In a joint statement with China, Russia reaffirmed that Taiwan was an “inseparable part of the People’s Republic of China” – a position the government in Taipei strongly disputes.
The government in Beijing says that as it is the successor state to the Republic of China it has a legal right to claim Taiwan under the text of the 1943 Cairo Declaration and 1945 Potsdam Declaration, the island at the time being a Japanese colony.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said those documents confirmed that it was the Republic of China which had sovereignty over Taiwan.
“At the time, the People’s Republic of China did not exist at all,” it said.
“Any false statements intended to distort Taiwan’s sovereign status cannot change history, nor can they shake the objective facts recognised by the international community.”
China labels Taiwan President Lai Ching-te a “separatist”. He rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Ryan Woo in Beijing; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Philippa Fletcher)
