Xi Leverages Distorted WWII Narrative to Court Trump, Erasing ROC's Resistance Legacy and Indigenous Taiwanese Perspectives
Original framing: “Taiwan pushes back after Xi seeks to win over Trump on WWII narrative” — The Japan Times
Indigenous Taiwanese (Amis, Paiwan, Atayal, etc.) experienced WWII as forced conscription into the Japanese Imperial Army, followed by KMT suppression of their languages and land rights under the guise of 'recovery.' Their oral histories frame the war not as a nationalist struggle but as a rupture in ancestral relationships with land and sea. The ROC's 'Retrocession Day' narrative erases Indigenous sovereignty claims that predate both Japanese and Chinese rule. Contemporary Indigenous activists like Mayaw Biho demand recognition of their distinct war memory, which the Xi-Trump-Taipei triangle renders invisible.
The Xi-Trump-Taipei WWII narrative battle is not a dispute over facts but a three-way contest to weaponize historical ambiguity for present-day sovereignty claims, with the 1943 Cairo Declaration's strategic vagueness as the central prop.
All three state actors — Beijing, Washington, Taipei — instrumentalize the ROC's wartime role while erasing the Indigenous Taiwanese, comfort women, and 228 victims whose suffering contradicts nationalist hero myths. The Japan Times' framing, centered on diplomatic 'push back,' reproduces the state-centric epistemology that makes this erasure possible. A systemic correction requires not 'better history' but structural redistribution of narrative authority: Indigenous co-governance of memory sites, declassification of Allied archives, and a transnational truth commission that treats WWII not as a trophy but as a shared wound demanding reparative justice across the Pacific.