With Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un among 26 world leaders watching, China’s president Xi Jinping made a muscular address to 50,000 people in Tiananmen Square marking 80 years since the end of the second world war. China is “never intimidated by bullies” and would “stand by the right side of history”, Xi said, adding that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation was unstoppable”.
Absent from the ceremony was Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, who instead took to Facebook, writing that Taiwan does not “commemorate peace with the barrel of a gun”. Taiwan had barred public officials from attending the event.
China and Taiwan both claim their forces bore the true burden of Chinese resistance against Japan during the second world war, and use this contested history to lay claim to power and territory. Now China is weaponising this history, pushing for a “correct” perspective of the war as it seeks to reshape the world order and assert its ambitions over Taiwan.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Meredith Oyen, a historian and expert in China-Taiwan relations, explains how disagreements between China and Taiwan over who fought the Japanese more than 80 years ago are still raging and why China’s military parade raised tensions with Taiwan up another notch.
“The second world war has this very long shadow in all of east Asia because there’s a lot of unfinished business,” says Oyen, an associate professor of history and Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
When Japan officially surrendered on September 9 at a ceremony in Nanjing, it was to the Republic of China, then ruled by Chiang Kai-shek. With the war against Japan over, Chiang’s nationalist Kuomintang resumed their civil war against the Chinese Communist Party. In 1949, Chiang and the Kuomintang were pushed to Taiwan as Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China.
As a result, persistent questions about whether China and Taiwan are two separate entities or a divided nation with Taiwan a part of China are a “really significant geopolitical flashpoint” says Oyen, “something that stems directly out of the second world war”.
Listen to the conversation with Meredith Oyen about how disagreements between China and Taiwan over the second world war on The Conversation Weekly podcast. You can also read an text version of this interview.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with assistance from Katie Flood. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Newclips in this episode from Straits Times , BBC News and NBC News and KinoLibrary .
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
