China Accuses Taiwan's DPP of 'Desecrating the Martyrs' — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Zhang Han, spokeswoman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a Sept 30 briefing that Taiwan's DPP was committing "a betrayal of history, a desecration of the martyrs, and a betrayal of the nation" over its criticism of Beijing's WWII interpretation.
- Taipei countered that Beijing is lauding the wrong China — the Republic of China government fought alongside the allies during WWII, not today's People's Republic of China, which was founded after the 1949 civil war.
- Beijing's official history credits communist guerrilla forces as the backbone of resistance against Japan, giving only passing mention to Kuomintang (KMT) forces who fought on what Beijing calls the "main battlefield."
- Xi Jinping and Donald Trump both invoked the wartime US-China alliance at their recent summit, days before the Taiwan row broke out, sharpening the diplomatic sensitivity of any challenge to a shared WWII narrative.
- Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945 and was handed to the Republic of China government at the war's end; that government fled to the island in 1949 after losing the civil war.
- Taiwan's DPP traditionally espouses a separate Taiwanese identity from China and rejects Beijing's territorial claim; China refuses to speak to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, labeling him a "separatist."
Why it matters: Beijing is weaponizing WWII memory to assert a single Chinese nation across the strait, forcing Taiwan's DPP — which rejects that territorial claim — into a lose-lose rhetorical corner. The clash lands days after Xi and Trump publicly praised the wartime US-China alliance, raising the cost of Taipei's separate-identity stance at a moment when its main backer's framing aligns more closely with Beijing's.
Ask SkimNews
