By Laurie Chen
BEIJING (Reuters) -China will hold a celebration of the 80th anniversary of Taiwan’s “retrocession” to Chinese rule, the government said on Wednesday, while sources told Reuters it was scheduled for this weekend in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Both China and Taiwan use the term “retrocession” to refer to the island’s 1945 handover by Japan, which colonised Taiwan in 1895, to the Republic of China government, a transfer whose anniversary falls on Saturday.
“Taiwan’s retrocession stands as a significant achievement of the victory in the War of Resistance,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, told reporters in Beijing, referring to World War Two.
“It was a great triumph forged through the relentless and bloody struggles of all Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, and deserves to be commemorated jointly by compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.”
China would hold an anniversary celebration and invite people from Taiwan to attend, she added, but did not state a date or say which Chinese leaders would attend.
China and democratically-governed Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, have repeatedly clashed this year over their differing interpretations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two.
Taiwan says it was the Republic of China that fought the war, not the People’s Republic of China, founded by Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949 after they won a civil war.
The Republic of China government fled to Taipei and the Republic of China remains Taiwan’s formal name.
Three diplomatic sources told Reuters that China had sent out invitations for the event, scheduled for Saturday in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, but it lacked details of who would address the meeting.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is a sensitive one.
CONTESTED HISTORY
Taiwan’s government says the island was handed to the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China, which did not exist at the time.
Beijing says as the successor state to the Republic of China, it has a right to claim the island as its own territory. Taiwan says that is nonsense as the Republic of China still exists.
At the last such anniversary event in 2015, Yu Zhengsheng, at the time China’s fourth-ranked leader, gave a speech and foreign representatives also attended.
Taiwan’s government last week banned Taiwanese officials from attending any “retrocession” events in China, saying Beijing was trying to distort history for its own ends.
Zhu in turn said Taiwan was trying to “distort and deny the historical facts” of World War Two, and “intimidate and suppress” Taiwanese from attending related Chinese events.
China held a massive military parade for last month’s anniversary of the end of World War Two.
On Saturday, Taipei is set to host East Asia’s largest Pride march, a riotous celebration of LGBTQ+ equality and diversity.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Clarence Fernandez)
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