Russia, China and Taiwan Spar Over World War Two Legacy in East Asia

Russian diplomats in Taiwan screened a film last week about Japanese "militarism" and World War Two, a move that has stirred concern inside Taiwan's government. Officials in Taipei believe Moscow is helping Beijing promote its account of a rising Japanese military threat and sow discord in Taiwan's relations with Japan and other Western partners.

The episode has drawn fresh attention to the sharply disputed history of the war in East Asia, where Russia, China and Taiwan each advance different interpretations of the same events.

Russia's role

Soviet forces entered the war in East Asia only in its final weeks, when the Red Army advanced into Japanese-occupied northeastern China. Moscow withdrew from most of that region in 1946, but before leaving it handed many captured Japanese weapons to Mao Zedong's communist forces, despite a friendship treaty already signed between the Soviet and Chinese governments.

After Mao defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China government in the Chinese civil war and proclaimed the People's Republic of China in October 1949, Moscow quickly recognised his government.

At the end of the war, Soviet troops also took control of four islands off Japan's Hokkaido, known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. They have remained in Moscow's hands since. No formal World War Two peace treaty has ever been signed between Moscow and Tokyo, with the unresolved territorial dispute over the islands the main obstacle.

Beijing's account

For the government in Beijing, the history is unambiguous. China describes a heroic and brutal struggle against Japan that began in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, in the country's northeast, and cost 35 million Chinese lives.

Beijing calls the conflict the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and, in the wider World War Two context, the World Anti-Fascist War. It holds that China and the Soviet Union were the "mainstay" of resistance against Japan and Germany, with communist guerrilla forces serving as the "backbone" of the fighting inside China.

Taiwan's counterpoint

Some of the strongest objections to Beijing's interpretation come from Taiwan, whose formal name is the Republic of China. Taipei argues that Beijing is claiming credit for a war fought before the People's Republic of China existed.

During the war, the Republic of China was the country's government, while Taiwan itself was a Japanese colony. Republican forces carried out much of the fighting against Japan and suspended their civil war with Mao's communists to form an uneasy alliance. It was the Republic of China under Chiang that signed the Japanese surrender alongside the other Allies, including the Soviet Union at the time.

Taiwan's government contends that Mao's communists used the war only to strengthen their own forces, and that Beijing has no right to claim the victory as its own. The Chinese civil war resumed after World War Two ended. Chiang and his government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after Mao's victory and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in the same year.