Sept 11 (Reuters) – Russian diplomats in Taiwan last week screened a film on Japanese “militarism” and World War Two, causing concern in Taiwan’s government which thinks Russia is helping China push its narrative of a rising Japanese military threat and sow discord over Taipei’s relations with Tokyo and other Western partners.
Below is an explainer about what the different – and disputed – points of view are on the history of the war in East Asia.
WHAT ROLE DID RUSSIA PLAY?
Soviet forces only entered World War Two in East Asia in its final weeks, with the Red Army sweeping into Japanese-occupied northeastern China.
Soviet forces withdrew from most of northeastern China in 1946, and the Soviets handed many captured Japanese weapons over to Mao Zedong’s communist forces, despite the prior signing of a friendship treaty between the Soviet and Chinese governments.
Moscow swiftly recognised Mao’s government after he proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 having defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China government in a civil war.
Soviet troops took control of four islands off Japan’s Hokkaido – known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories – at the end of World War Two and they have remained in Moscow’s hands ever since.
Moscow and Tokyo have never signed a formal World War Two peace treaty, with the main hurdle being the unresolved territorial dispute over the islands.
WHAT IS CHINA’S VIEW OF WORLD WAR TWO?
For the Chinese government sitting in Beijing, this is a clear-cut issue: China sacrificed 35 million people in a heroic and brutal struggle against Japan that began in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of its northeastern region of Manchuria.
China calls the conflict the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and, for World War Two, the World Anti-Fascist War.
It says China and the Soviet Union served as the “mainstay” of resistance against Japan and Germany during World War Two, with communist guerrilla forces acting as the “backbone” of the fighting in China.
WHAT ABOUT TAIWAN?
Some of the most bitter feelings about Beijing’s interpretation of the war are in Taiwan, whose formal name is the Republic of China and which argues that Beijing is claiming credit for a war fought before its present People’s Republic of China was even founded.
During the war, the Republic of China was the country’s government and Taiwan itself was a Japanese colony. Republican forces did much of the fighting against Japan and put a civil war on hold to form an uneasy alliance with Mao’s communists.
It was the then Republic of China, under Chiang, that signed the Japanese surrender along with the other Allies, including the then Soviet Union.
Taiwan’s government says Mao’s communists only used the war to strengthen their own forces, and that the Beijing government has no right to claim the victory as its own.
The civil war in China resumed after the end of World War Two. Chiang and his government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after Mao was victorious and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in the same year.
(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry)
