Taipei’s dilemma over history deepens with Xi-Trump praise of WWII Flying Tigers

Taipei’s dilemma over its history during World War II appeared to deepen as Beijing and Washington looked to the Flying Tigers as a source of connection and goodwill during last month’s Xi–Trump summit.

US President Donald Trump’s description of China as an American ally during the war has raised concerns in Taiwan that what could have been a valuable historical connection with the United States ended up benefiting Beijing’s ties with Washington.

The dilemma resurfaced after Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping repeatedly invoked wartime Sino-US cooperation during Xi’s visit to Washington last week.

Trump described China and the US as World War II allies and praised the Flying Tigers – a unit of American military personnel who helped defend mainland China against Japanese air attacks – while Xi recalled the two countries fighting “side by side” against Japanese militarism.

A White House fact sheet later said the two leaders recalled that the US and China “were allies in World War II and fought side by side to win the war”.

The episode has put Taiwan’s independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party in an awkward position.

Some argue that the island’s long-running efforts to emphasise a distinct Taiwanese identity over the pre-1949 history of the Republic of China (ROC) – Taiwan’s official name – have inadvertently created space for Beijing to claim that legacy.

When China fought Japan alongside the Allies, it was represented by the ROC government, which was overthrown in 1949 on the mainland when Communist forces won the civil war and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Taipei objected to the wartime reference during the Xi-Trump summit, with Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Chih-chung accusing Beijing of trying to replace the ROC’s wartime role and describing the effort as part of Beijing’s “narrative diplomacy”.

The dispute has in fact exposed a dilemma for the DPP, which is now invoking the ROC’s wartime legacy internationally after years of seeking to distinguish Taiwan’s history and identity from that of mainland China.

Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, which ruled the ROC during the war, accused the William Lai Ching-te administration of invoking the pre-1949 republic only when politically useful.

The KMT government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to the communists, and the island retains ROC as its formal name.

KMT communications director Chen I-hsin said Lai had emphasised the “end of the second world war” – a term Japan uses for its defeat – during last year’s 80th anniversary commemorations rather than “victory in the war of resistance against Japan”.

Chen accused the DPP of deliberately distancing itself from the ROC’s mainland-era history.

However, Chuang Jui-hsiung, the DPP’s legislative caucus chief executive, said the “China” that fought alongside the US was indeed the ROC and that “diplomatic language between major powers is often deliberately vague and should not be overinterpreted”.

The controversy has nevertheless highlighted a broader contest between Taipei and Beijing over who inherits the international historical identity of wartime China.

According to Wang Hsin-hsien, director of the National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations in Taipei, while Beijing has long maintained this wartime narrative, what sets this instance apart is that the American account also referred simply to “China” in the context of World War II.

“Trump wants something in the short term, while Xi wants a long-term discourse and narrative,” Wang said.

Washington appeared interested in invoking wartime cooperation to help stabilise Sino-US relations, he added, and Beijing was pursuing a broader historical argument involving the second world war, Taiwan and the post-war international order.

Together with Beijing’s commemorations of what it has called Taiwan’s “restoration” to China following Japan’s surrender in 1945, such arguments were gradually forming a “legal chain”, Wang continued.

If Washington increasingly accepted the same historical framework, the ROC’s role could be “taken away wholesale”, he said.

Yen Chen-sheng, a researcher at the same institute, added that the DPP’s distancing Taiwan from ROC history risked abandoning a valuable historical connection with the US.

That relationship stretched from wartime cooperation and the ROC’s status as a founding member of the United Nations to close political and security ties between Taipei and Washington after the Chinese civil war, Yen said.

The ROC was a founding member of the UN before the global body voted in 1971 to recognise the PRC as the only lawful representative of China at the United Nations.

The debate has also spread online, where critics have accused the DPP of protesting against Beijing’s “erasure” of the ROC while playing down the same name itself.

“On the one hand, they’re quietly pushing Taiwan independence and de-Sinicisation,” one critic said. “On the other, they pretend to be deeply upset and aggrieved. It’s really ugly.”

Beijing has rejected Taipei’s objections. Its Taiwan Affairs Office said victory in the war belonged to the entire Chinese nation while acknowledging that Communist and Nationalist or KMT forces fought on different battlefronts.

It also said the establishment of the PRC in 1949 represented a change of government rather than a change in China’s international legal identity, underpinning Beijing’s status as the inheritor of the historical role of the wartime Chinese state.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

The historical dispute could become more consequential if Washington increasingly adopted the same terminology, analysts said.

Wang said repeated American references simply to “China” – without distinguishing the wartime ROC from today’s PRC – could gradually strengthen Beijing’s ability to define that history internationally.

“At least on the issue of the second world war, we really need to be careful.”