Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Saturday embellished Japan's colonization of China's Taiwan, saying that the island's current high education standards resulted from compulsory education implemented by Japan during the period of colonization, Kyodo News reported.

In defiance of the joint communique signed in 1972 when China and Japan established diplomatic relationship, Aso also mentioned Taiwan as "a country" in his speech in Japan's prefecture of Fukuoka, Kyodo said.

"Thanks to the significant improvement in educational standards and literacy (during the colonization), Taiwan is now a country with a very high education level and keeps up with the current era," the foreign minister was quoted as saying.

Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. In 1895, through a war of aggression against China, Japan forced the Qing government to sign the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki and forcibly occupied Taiwan.

During the period of occupation, Taiwanese were forced to learn Japanese under Japan's cruel policy of colonization.

Following Japan's World War II defeat in 1945, Taiwan was returned to China as required by the Potsdam Proclamation and the Cairo Declaration. On Oct. 25, 1945, China recovered Taiwan and the Penghu Archipelago, resuming the exercise of sovereignty over Taiwan.

On Tuesday last week, a spokesman for Japan's foreign ministry reaffirmed that Japan will uphold its position on the Taiwan issue expressed in the joint communique between the two countries, and that Japan "does not take a policy of 'two Chinas' or 'one China and one Taiwan'."

Source: Xinhua