00:00Beijing is gearing up for a massive military parade.
00:07It's releasing dramas and documentaries.
00:10It's opening new museum exhibits.
00:12Its television channels will broadcast nearly 100 war-themed movies through the end of the year.
00:17All to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
00:22In the months before the event, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials
00:26have increasingly brought up China's fight against Japan during the war,
00:30through state media, at press conferences, and in speeches.
00:34The country is going to great lengths to emphasize this period in history.
00:38But the question is, why?
00:41People like to take World War II history, as they take other history,
00:44and pick out the things that for them work as an argument about the present.
00:49And you find that all over the place, not just China that does it,
00:52but China is very keen, in some ways, to use aspects of that history to push present-day claims.
00:59First, let's talk about China's story.
01:03China emphasizes its role in World War II and argues it was the Chinese Communist Party
01:08that led the fight against Japan during the conflict.
01:11It uses this to legitimize its rule at home, strengthen its image on the global stage,
01:16and bolster its territorial claims to Taiwan.
01:19Now, let's take a look at what actually happened.
01:22The trouble in the Far East continues to engage worldwide attention.
01:25The Japanese army marches on a daybreak.
01:27Conflict broke out in the 1930s, as Chinese forces resisted Japanese invasion.
01:33The war killed millions of Chinese civilians and lasted until 1945, when Japan surrendered.
01:39At the time, China was governed by the Kuomintang, also known in English as the Nationalist Party,
01:44which was already in a civil war with the communists.
01:47The two sides formed a temporary alliance,
01:50but historians say the Nationalists did most of the fighting in major battles,
01:54while the communists played a smaller role.
01:56The U.S. and other outside powers also eventually joined the fight.
02:00Later, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan as they were losing the Chinese Civil War,
02:04and the communists took control of the mainland.
02:06Today, the battle continues.
02:09But now, it's won over memory.
02:12China downplays the roles of other actors in the war,
02:15and exaggerates the Communist Party's contributions,
02:18using its claims to help bolster the party's legitimacy.
02:21So, because the Chinese Communist Party famously is not a party that seeks legitimacy through democratic elections
02:28and the sense of multi-party elections, the historical record is very important in terms of shaping its argument that it has a right to rule.
02:38And the war against Japan, as really the single most significant national crisis in terms of conflict between two different nation states,
02:50provides a very important part of that justification.
02:54It's also using this history to bolster its reputation on the global stage,
03:01by painting itself as a founding force of the post-World War II order,
03:05including the creation of the United Nations in the war's immediate aftermath,
03:09when China got one of the five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council.
03:13This narrative leaves out one key point.
03:16China's U.N. seat at the time belonged to the Republic of China,
03:19led by the nationalists that later fled to Taiwan,
03:22not the Communist-led People's Republic of China.
03:25The seat was only transferred to the PRC around 25 years later.
03:29Still, China uses this moment to frame itself as a responsible and stable global leader.
03:37And then there's Taiwan, which China claims as its own,
03:41using World War II history to bolster those claims.
03:44This goes back to two statements by the Allied powers towards the end of the war,
04:03the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation,
04:06which indicated that Taiwan should be, quote,
04:08restored to the Republic of China.
04:10Though the documents don't mention the PRC,
04:13the Chinese government uses these statements to argue Taiwan is its territory.
04:17But many other countries instead consider the Treaty of San Francisco,
04:21which formally ended the war with Japan in 1951,
04:24to be more legally important.
04:26It required Japan to, quote,
04:28renounce all right, title, and claim to Taiwan
04:31without specifying who it would be given to.
04:34China does not recognize this treaty.
04:36So, they want to use these historical statements to
04:42to destroy the old peace and peace treaty,
04:46or the Chinese people in Taiwan.
04:50These things, as I speak to China, are very annoying.
04:54So they don't talk about these things.
04:57They're only talking about the early and early stages.
04:59Much of the picture China paints of its role in World War II and its aftermath is heavily disputed.
05:04Taiwan's government has strongly criticized China's story,
05:08accusing it of distorting the facts,
05:10arguing that it was the ROC that won the war, not the PRC.
05:14But China is still marching ahead,
05:16this period of history proving a powerful tool for its ambitions in the present and the future.
05:23Hank Xu and Cadence Quaranta for Taiwan Plus.
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