But the anniversary of the 1945 handover by Japan was played down in Taipei, where Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949.
Beijing had avoided high-profile official commemorations of Taiwan's return in the past because doing so would complicate its claim that the Red Army - and not the Nationalists - won the eight-year war against Japan which ended as World War Two drew to a close.
But China has taken a new tack as part of a drive to rein in the increasingly assertive leaders of Taiwan, which Beijing has threatened to attack if it formally declares statehood.
Jia Qinglin, ranked fourth in the Communist Party hierarchy and head of the top advisory body to parliament, told a gathering at the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing that "stopping separatist activities was the top priority".