As President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing for his state visit and summit with People’s Republic of China (PRC) President Xi Jinping, he could very well find himself receiving history lectures from his hosts. These excursions into the past, focused especially on Beijing’s interpretation of the Second World War, will be used to attempt to “educate” the US president and his team on two issues: Taiwan and Japan. That narrative will be used to argue on behalf of PRC claims on Taiwan and to accuse US ally Japan of resurgent militarism.
Commemorating the End of the Second World War
Indeed, President Trump arrives in Beijing on the heels of a protracted historical campaign by the PRC in which a carefully curated interpretation of China’s role in the Second World War has been enlisted for both domestic and foreign policy purposes. Throughout 2025, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II (known in China as the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War”), the PRC went to great lengths to make commemorating China’s role in the allied victory a protracted national event. The range of activities was impressive: academic conferences, television documentaries and docudramas, local commemorations, feature stories in the state-controlled media, and a refurbished war museum. All these commemorative activities culminated with a massive victory parade by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on September 3, 2025, showcasing its most advanced weapons systems.
While official commemorations of the war in the West are often occasions to showcase the allied effort, Beijing’s telling of the conflict is decidedly Red Army-centric. The narrative gives token recognition to the efforts of the allied forces—including the Nationalist Chinese forces—that fought together in the China-Burma-India Theater. Overall, however, allied efforts take a back seat in the story. I and other foreign observers have taken issue with this narrative.
Using the Past to Serve the Present
It is unsurprising that the PRC party-state apparatus went to great lengths to commemorate the end of the war. For the Chinese Communist Party, Japan’s surrender was a critical moment on their eventual march to power after winning a bloody civil war in 1949 over Nationalists led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek—who fled to establish a government in Taiwan. Moreover, the struggle against Japan is still an issue that resonates in some quarters in Taiwan as at least one shared experience with the mainland, especially with Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang). Thus, the war also plays into cross-Strait relations. It is also worth remembering that the commemorations also revisited tremendous human sacrifice on a national scale. It is undeniable that the people of China fought desperately, heroically, and alone for many years, suffering untold millions of casualties among soldiers and civilians, so the commemorations are not solely cynical politics. China suffered greatly during the war.
In dealing with some current international issues, today’s PRC government is taking on the mantle of one of the war’s victorious allied powers. Although the PRC was not established until 1949, it considers itself and presents itself, as the heir to that role, being the successor government on the mainland to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Republic of China. Embracing that role in the war is a significant dimension of Beijing’s claim to Taiwan. The war is also used to bash Japan when the occasion calls for it, with the PRC in the role as victor and Japan relegated in PRC pronouncements to “a defeated axis power.” President Trump and his team may encounter these historical assertions when discussions turn to Taiwan, Japan, and other key issues in international security affairs.
Japan, Taiwan, and Second World War History
The 80th anniversary commemorations of the Second World War are over, but the PRC’s focus on the war continues, even as the President and his entourage arrive in Beijing—this time deployed as an integral part of Beijing’s responses to comments made by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae on November 7, 2025. Specifically, during a contentious public exchange with an opposition party member in the lower house of the Diet, Prime Minister Takaichi, when pressed on a hypothetical conflict scenario involving Taiwan, speculated about circumstances under which the Japan Self Defense Force could be deployed.
Beijing’s responses were swift, multifaceted, and continue as of this writing, triggering the most significant row in Sino-Japanese relations in years. The PRC retaliated with economic responses such as banning the import of Japanese seafood, curtailing Chinese tourism to Japan, canceling cultural exchanges, reportedly increased military pressure around the contested Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, as well as reports of PRC drones in the vicinity of Japan’s Yonaguni Island, some 70 miles from the east coast of Taiwan.
Resurrecting the Cairo Conference
Beijing’s rhetorical responses to Prime Minister Takaichi’s comments have been shrill, accusing Japan of backsliding into 1930s militarism, moving toward rejection of Japan’s “peace constitution,” and walking away from its obligations as “a defeated axis power.” In these arguments, Beijing invokes three wartime documents: the Cairo Declaration (November 27, 1943), the Potsdam Proclamation (July 26, 1945), and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender (September 2, 1945).
Of the three, the one with the most direct relevance to Taiwan is the first Cairo Conference of November 1943—the only wartime meeting among allied leaders attended by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, representing the Republic of China (ROC). The conference ended with the release of a press communique, often referred to as the “Cairo Declaration.” It articulated their intention to return to China territories taken by Japan during the Second World War or ceded to Tokyo by the Qing Dynasty as a result of their defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Prominent among those territories was Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa)—a Japanese colony until 1945.
PRC officials also cite the Potsdam Proclamation and the Instrument of Surrender of Japan because each contained a clause reiterating the decisions made about Taiwan in the Cairo Declaration. As far as Beijing is concerned, the terms of the Cairo Declaration were not carried out because it considers the PRC the only legitimate government of China to which Taiwan should be ceded. As a result, the US president and his American delegation may very well be told that the meetings at Cairo in 1943 affirmed China’s sovereignty—meaning, the PRC’s sovereignty—over Taiwan as a major outcome of the war. However, the reality is much more complicated.
A summit as important as the one taking place this week between President Trump and President Xi is not the moment to engage in historical debates. Summits are not seminars. But on the issues of Taiwan and Japan, the US delegation could very well find itself transported to the past by their hosts. Xi himself has already signaled as much. The official PRC readout of President Xi’s November 2025 phone call with President Trump states, “President Xi outlined China’s principled position on the Taiwan question. He underscored that Taiwan’s return to China is an integral part of the post-war international order. China and the US fought shoulder to shoulder against fascism and militarism. Given what is going on, it is even more important for us to jointly safeguard the victory of WWII.” No matter the many urgent contemporary issues, with the PRC, history will always be on the agenda.
