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Former Taiwanese premier Hau Pei-tsun says the mainland government has downplayed the dominant role that Nationalist forces played in defeating the Japanese military during the second world war. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Taiwanese retired generals attending Beijing second world war parade should be stripped of pensions, says island’s former premier

Hau Pei-tsun, a former Taiwanese premier who fought against the Japanese in the second world war, says any retired generals from the island who attend a parade in Beijing next week to mark the anniversary of the conflict should be stripped of their pensions.

“If retired generals in the Kuomintang military want to attend Beijing’s war parade that means they are going to endorse Beijing’s propaganda that the Communist Party was the mainstay in the war”, Hau was quoted as saying by the United Daily News.

Beijing has announced that retired Nationalist soldiers from Taiwan will attend the parade in the capital on September 3.

Taiwan’s defence ministry has urged war veterans to stay away from the parade, saying it was Nationalist, or KMT, forces led by Chiang Kai-shek that led China’s resistance against Japan up to 1945.

Nationalist troops later fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war on mainland China to communist forces.

Troops training for the military parade in Beijing on September 3. Photo: Xinhua

“The eight-year long anti-Japanese war was led by the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek. Historical truth is not allowed to be distorted and falsified in any way,” a statement posted on Taiwan’s defence ministry’s website said. “As a soldier, retired KMT generals should stick to the stance of the [Taiwanese government] and be self-disciplined. Don’t go to mainland China to take part in the Communist Party’s commemorative events.”

Hau, 96, who was the self-ruled island’s longest-serving chief of general staff in the military and premier in the 1980s and 1990s, has published an open letter calling on Beijing’s leadership to restore the historical truth of the war against Japan.

The Kuomintang’s honorary chairman Lien Chan has said he will visit Beijing and take part in a series of commemorative events, including the massive military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

Lien’s decision has sparked an outcry in Taiwan.

READ MORE: Taiwan's former premier Lien Chan stirs controversy by agreeing to attend Beijing's war parade

Taiwan Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen said Taiwanese people visiting mainland China should “promote the historical facts” about the fight against Japan’s military.

Wang Chaoguang, the deputy director of the modern history research centre at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told a press conference about the commemorative activities that the Communist Party has gradually recognised Nationalist forces’ contribution in the fight against Japan during the second world war.

“My personal understanding of the history is people across the Taiwan Strait share the common memory of the anti-Japanese war with a number of Taiwanese resolutely resisting Japan’s invasion of Taiwan [in 1895],” Wang said.

“Many Taiwanese also came to mainland and took part in the anti-Japanese war once it broke out [in 1937-1945],” he said.

 

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