The Jerusalem Post reports: “China is intentionally mischaracterising World War II-era documents to put pressure on and isolate Taiwan, as those accords made no determination of the island’s ultimate political status, the de facto US embassy in Taipei said.

The 80th anniversary of the war’s end has been marked by a bitter dispute between Taipei and Beijing on its broader historical meaning and relevance today. 

Beijing says documents such as the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation support its legal claims of sovereignty over the island, as they call for Taiwan to be ‘restored’ to Chinese rule at a time when it was a colony of Japan.

The Chinese government at the time was the Republic of China, which fled in 1949 to Taiwan after losing a subsequent civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists.

The Republic of China remains Taiwan’s formal name, and its government says no World War II agreements made any mention of Mao’s People’s Republic of China because it did not exist then, so that Beijing has no right to claim Taiwan now…”