Taiwan stands up to China with World War II military parade | World Defense

Taiwan stands up to China with World War II military parade

Redheart

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Taiwan stands up to China with World War II military parade - Yahoo News

Taiwan marched out thousands of troops and displayed its most modern military hardware Saturday to spotlight an old but often forgotten claim that its forces, not the Chinese Communists, led the campaign that routed imperial Japan from China 70 years ago.

The military staged an unusually large two-hour parade of homegrown missiles, Apache attack helicopters and a mountain bike team designed for stealth missions, followed by awards for aged World War II veterans in their attire from the 1940s.

China and Taiwan split during civil war in 1949 and today's China — more militarily and economically powerful than Taiwan — claims that the Chinese Communists had directed the resistance against the Japanese. Mainland officials have argued that the Communists' advice and fighting skills were crucial to the victory.

Taiwan's Nationalist Party ruled all of China when Japan invaded parts of the country from 1931, forming a central stage of the Asian World War II theater. In one attack, the Japanese massacred between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese in what has become known as the Nanjing Massacre.

Officials in Taiwan say that the Communist forces had a minor role in fighting the Japanese alongside the Republic of China troops, and that during China's eight-year resistance against Japan they were mainly building up their own ranks and fighting a civil war they would eventually win.

"The war of resistance was led by the Republic of China and Chairman Chiang Kai-shek was the force behind it," Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said in a speech after the parade, referring to the old Nationalist government's strongman. "No one is allowed to distort that."

After losing the civil war, the Nationalists rebased in Taiwan in the late 1940s, and their constitutional Republic of China government has governed the western Pacific island since then.

China's Communists also claim sovereignty over Taiwan and insist that the two sides eventually reunify, though opinion polls on the island show most Taiwanese prefer self-rule.

Taiwan's effort to cast the war in its favor comes as it seeks to avoid being eclipsed internationally by China, which has eight times more diplomatic allies.

"It's because the rest of the world is ignoring the Republic of China, so they want their contribution to be well recognized," said Kweibo Huang, associate professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei. "At least there's a domestic outcome, which is that everyone in Taiwan shares awareness as a nation or a sovereign state."

China will offer a three-day public holiday in September to mark the war anniversary, and the official Xinhua news agency says the government will hold its first World War II memorial parade that month.

Beijing had invited Taiwan representatives, but the island government said in April that officials would be banned by law and that any private citizens should attend with caution.
 

vash

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While KMT indeed did most of the frontal warfare against the Japanese invasion, the CCP did their part in the occupied area in the form of guerrilla warfare. It is mostly due to the situation... not by choice.

At the time of Japanese invasion, KMT was in a dominate position in China which controlled majority of the country, including ALL large cities, towns. The two parties were in the same Republic of China government until Jiang Kai Shek ordered to kill on sight against CCP. CCP was on the run ever since and had no major permanent base. Even when Japanese already started the invasion, Jiang Kai Shek was ordering his generals continue to fight the CCP instead of fighting the Japanese. He ordered the the troops to retreat from Manchuria without firing a shot. Japan took Manchuria (the size of western Europe) without any resistance from KMT.

Jiang Kai Shek continued his war on CCP and refuse to do a full mobilization against the Japanese invasion ... until... a coup.
Marshal Zhang Xueliang (originally a warlord in Manchuria) begged Jiang Kai Shek stop the civil war and fight the Japanese along side of the CCP. Jiang refused. So Marshal Zhang Xueliang ordered his troops to capture Jiang.
It was known as Xi'an Incident.
Xi'an Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jiang Kai Shek was released upon the promise of create a united front with CCP to against the Japanese.


Anyway, so you see. While it is true that KMT did more large campaigns during WWII, it wasn't until after the Xi'an Incident and not by choice anyway. When their cities were attacked, they had to respond.

But of course, CCP always exaggerate their roles in WWII. While they did nonstop guerrilla warfare, of course their role was much smaller than KMT who lost 3 to 4 million troops in 8 years.
 

Corzhens

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That parade is a good historical activity and I don't want to look at it as a show of mighty force by the Taiwan armed forces even if the caption says so. And those items like who defeated Japan during the war of the olden times is immaterial since that is already history. What matters is the present so why relive the sad past of that war? Maybe we have to be on the positive side most of the time.
 
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