Meredith Oyen
World War II casts a very long shadow in East Asia. Eighty years after ending with Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on September 2, 1945, the conflict continues to stir debate over the past, in the context of today’s geopolitical tensions.
China’s high-profile military parade commemorating the conclusion of what Beijing calls the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” is a case in point.
In the run-up to the September 3, 2025, event, the Chinese Communist Party has been criticized in Tokyo for stoking anti-Japanese sentiment and in the United States for downplaying the U.S. role while playing up Russia’s.
But as an expert on Taiwan-China relations, I’m interested in the battle over the narrative between Taipei and Beijing. During World War II, China’s Communists and Nationalists became uneasy internal allies, putting their civil war on pause to unite against Japan. Afterward, the Communists prevailed and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, where they continued to run their own government – one the mainland has never recognized.
Months of bickering over the commemorations shine a light on how both sides view their respective roles in defeating Japan – and what the show of military force by Beijing signals today.
To Whom Did Japan Surrender?
A peculiarity of the current commemorations is that Japan did not actually surrender to Communist China, or technically to China at all. On September 9, 1945, a week after agreeing to the terms laid out by the Allied forces, Japan, at a ceremony in Nanjing, formally surrendered to China’s National Revolutionary Army – the military wing of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek.
And this gets to the heart of why many in Taiwan – where the Nationalists fled at the conclusion of China’s civil war in 1949 – are unhappy with Beijing’s projection of the Communists as the victors against Japan.
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