Beijing has published its full version of the history of the Republic of China, recognising the role of Chiang Kai-shek in fighting the Japanese in the second world war.
Analysts on the mainland and Taiwan said the book would assist in the healthy development of cross-strait relations, because it restores a part of history that had been deleted by the Communist Party.
In the book, History of the Republic of China, mainland historians highlight the significance of co-operation between the party and the Kuomintang during the second Sino-Japanese war from 1937 to 1945, the People's Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, said on Tuesday.
Jin Yilin , director of the Taiwan research centre at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the book shed new light on the struggles between the party and KMT before 1949.
'We turned down our old interpretation - that the KMT was the loser - and set up a new angle, which is that the two parties were actually competitors, but they had to co-operate during the anti-Japanese war,' Jin said, according to the Xinhua News Agency. 'The conflicts between the [party] and the KMT were caused by the different choices of then social elites in our country.'
The KMT was defeated by the party in 1949. As a result, Chiang moved the ROC government to Taiwan, and the party set up its regime of the People's Republic of China.
Jin said mainland historians hoped the book would pave the way for cross-strait political talks.