Historical anniversaries

In the SCMP, a fascinating semantic and logical conundrum about who has the right to ‘own’ celebrations for the 80th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II. (Put aside debate about: 1) whether China ‘defeated’ Japan, which surrendered only after the US dropped two atom bombs; and 2) the role of the CCP versus the KMT-run ROC forces in the war against Japan.)

Beijing is organizing a grand parade, and is inviting world leaders and others – including retired KMT/ROC officials from Taiwan. The Taiwan government is threatening these people with fines and loss of pensions if they go…

The move has reignited long-standing tensions over Taiwan’s identity, the ownership of ROC history, and the reluctance of Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to fully embrace the ROC’s historical roots in mainland China.

Critics accused the administration of honouring the ROC’s wartime triumph without acknowledging its mainland roots before 1949.

The SCMP’s wording, reflecting its pro-Beijing editorial position, isn’t helping here. It’s not that the DPP is ‘reluctant’ to embrace the ROC’s roots in the Mainland; it knows full well where the ROC came from. It is reluctant to embrace the idea that the ROC has existed in practice in Taiwan ever since the KMT dictatorship gave way to democracy in the 1980s. To the DPP ideologically, the KMT-run ROC was simply the colonizing regime that replaced Japan and moved its administration to Taipei after losing the Chinese civil war (suppressing uprisings among what Western press called ‘Formosans’). Despite KMT efforts to Sinicize the population in the 1950s-70s, the ROC is not a source of identity for many Taiwanese who trace their roots back to 17th Century settlers from Fujian.

But of course it’s more complicated. The ROC is still the official name of the country/island/entity, and provides the state, military and other trappings, including the flag. And the KMT is very much part of modern Taiwan’s identity as one of the main political parties, and as a patron of former soldiers and other groups, including criminal gangs.

It gets even more confusing when a DPP administration – rather than shrug off China and WWII as other people’s business – tries to claim the mantle of the ROC as a way to score points against both the KMT and Beijing…

KMT legislator Ma Wen-chun accused the Lai government of neglecting the ROC’s history… “If the DPP has discarded ROC history, can it blame Beijing for claiming it?” Ma asked. “If the ROC won the war, we should mark it with pride – not passively let others write that narrative.”

What does he mean by ‘we’? Taiwanese whose ancestors left China during the Ming dynasty and were later handed to Japan by Manchus (and quite possibly served in the Japanese forces in the war)?  Bear in mind this is the SCMP’s choice of sources to quote – no DPP people.

…[Academic] Ho Chih-yung slammed the DPP for wanting “the moral authority of the anti-Japanese legacy without acknowledging the ROC that fought the war”.

“The ROC flag and military traditions are only honoured when it is politically convenient,” he said.

[Academic] James Yifan Chen warned that Lai’s reluctance to hold a more formal commemoration might allow Beijing to dominate the historical discourse.

“Neither the DPP nor the Communist Party led the ROC’s war effort,” he said. “It was the ROC under Chiang Kai-shek that defeated Japan. 

Find anyone in this story who is not involved in historical revisionism.

RTHK reports on two veterans who visited Chinese naval ships passing through Hong Kong last week…

The Chinese naval fleet docked in Hong Kong for a five-day port visit has welcomed two former anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters, as the veterans onboard a warship hailed the country’s military advancement.

Lam Chun and Law King-fai, both in their 90s, made a trip to the Ngong Shuen Chau Barracks on Stonecutters Island and the destroyer Zhanjiang on Saturday.

They were once part of the Dongjiang Column, a guerrilla force fighting the Japanese during the Second World War.

“We have now witnessed the warships making concrete advances, defending our motherland,” Lam said.

“They are not here to be involved in battles, but to protect ourselves, so that we can continue with our development.”

Law, for his part, recalled going to war in wooden boats back in the day, saying the country’s naval vessels and weapons have changed and developed rapidly throughout the years.

The sprightly pair are described as being in their 90s. The average surviving WWII veteran in most countries is now 100, but maybe the East River Column had some younger members. 

To me, the most impressive resistance fighters must be these teenage Dutch girls…

The Oversteegens and Schaft also killed German soldiers, with Freddie being the first of the girls to kill a soldier by shooting him while riding her bicycle. They also lured soldiers to the woods under the pretense of a romantic overture and then killed them. Oversteegen would approach the soldiers in taverns and bars and ask them to “go for a stroll” in the forest.

The Dalai Lama was 90 years old on Sunday. China File interviews several experts on how his successor will be chosen. Isabel Hilton…

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has firmly assigned the sole authority in the search and identification of his next incarnation to the Gaden Phodrang, his own office based in Dharamshala in northern India…

The Chinese foreign ministry’s response was from a familiar script: The final authority on all matters to do with reincarnation lies exclusively with China’s central government. In other words: The Dalai Lama has no right to lay down the conditions of his next rebirth. And not only has the Dalai Lama no right not to be reborn, according to Beijing, he has no say in where and how he will return. I sometimes imagine that I hear hollow laughter ringing out from the grave of one Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, in London, a short walk away from where I am writing this.