China, asserting its claim to Taiwan, will for the first time mark the anniversary of the island’s return to Chinese rule this month with leaders attending a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, an official said on Thursday.
Communist China has so far never celebrated the October 25 anniversary because doing so would complicate its claim that the Communist Red Army, not the Nationalists, won the eight-year war against Japan.
Japan returned Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists at the end of World War Two in 1945 after 50 years of colonial rule. The Nationalists lost the civil war to the Communists in 1949 and fled to the island, over which Beijing still claims sovereignty.