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Earlier this month Russian diplomats in Taiwan screened a film on Japanese “militarism” and World War II, 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.
There are different – and disputed – points of view on the history of the war in East Asia.
Soviet forces only entered World War II 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.
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 claimed four islands off Japan’s Hokkaido – known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories – at the end of WWII and they have been in Moscow’s hands since.
Moscow and Tokyo have never signed a formal World War II peace treaty.
For the Chinese government sitting in Beijing, this is a clear-cut issue: China sacrificed 35mn 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 II, the World Anti-Fascist War.
Some of the most bitter feelings about Beijing’s interpretation of the war are in Taiwan, 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.
The civil war in China resumed after the end of WWII. 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.
