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SCMP Reporter

After years of playing the villain in mainland films and  television dramas, Kuomintang soldiers are set to be portrayed as heroes who saved the nation from the imperial Japanese army and led China to the final victory.
The mainland has approached Taiwan to jointly produce several films glorifying the heroic acts of KMT soldiers in China's epic struggle with Japanese invaders from 1937 to 1945, a Taiwanese newspaper has reported.
For most mainlanders growing up and watching films in which KMT soldiers are inevitably depicted as useless cowards or villains, a drastic change has been quietly taking place in mainland cinemas over the past few years.
For decades, Beijing and the state-controlled film industry seldom mentioned the role played by KMT armies in the Sino-Japanese war. The focus instead was always on communist soldiers or guerilla fighters, despite them playing only a marginal role in the  struggle.
Now with warming ties across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing is eager to stress common roots.
A Beijing-based film company has proposed shooting two films with a Taiwanese company.
One is the story of how 800 KMT soldiers of the 524th Regiment  gallantly held up thousands of Japanese invaders for weeks during the battle of Shanghai, winning valuable time for  civilians to escape. 
The other is the tale of KMT general Zhang Zizhong  - the highest-ranking Chinese soldier to die  in the war and a well-respected national hero. Both movies are based on true events.
Even though no Taiwanese film company has accepted the proposal yet, the idea was immediately picked up and endorsed by  Beijing's  State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. The administration's deputy director, Tian Jin, said it welcomed the proposal.
The mainland has promised to open its closely guarded cultural and education sector to  Taiwanese business.
In July, culture minister Cai Wu said at the fifth Cross-Straits Economic, Trade and Culture Forum that cultural authorities were adjusting policies to encourage the Taiwanese entertainment industry to develop projects on the mainland.
Taiwanese companies and individuals would be allowed to make films across the strait with a mainland partner.
For decades, the mainland's propaganda authorities have turned the KMT army into public enemy  number one, regularly making films and  television programmes depicting alleged KMT atrocities during the brutal civil war.
The public has been taught that the victory of the Sino-Japanese war was achieved under the leadership of the Communist Party and the Red Army, later renamed the People's Liberation Army.
The KMT emblem and flag were taboo in mainland films.
But changes were quietly introduced in the past few years.
More and more films  started to shed a positive light on KMT soldiers, including the widely acclaimed Nanjing, Nanjing, released earlier this year.




Beijing asks Taipei to help make war films glorifying KMT troops