Last year, when Chinese President Hu Jintao (
However, even the most basic understanding of the American Civil War would show that Beijing is actually the Confederacy.
Let us take the comparison step by step. The president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, helped design the Confederate flag. He placed 13 stars in the flag to represent 13 states. However, his exaggeration and false prediction was exposed when there were only eleven slave states.
Isn't Beijing also fantasizing about the "extra" province of Taiwan?
The South relied on a pre-modern economy -- slavery plus cotton. Slaves represented about 60 percent of the planters' capital. The economy required a considerable amount of workers who were not free to make the South competitive in the national and world markets.
The Chinese Communist Party has created the considerable wealth of the country through its own control of the people and the economy.
The system survives in part because of a vast reservoir of unemployed and economically exploited lower-class workers and farmers with no health insurance, poor shelter, polluted rural areas and the increasing threat of diseases and viruses from unsanitary living conditions. Like the Confederacy, the best gift to its population would be freedom.
The South failed to win the war for two reasons. Both can be applied to China.
First, the Confederacy could never enlist women and slaves in its cause.
There is a lot of evidence that the South might have been successful if the full population supported its slavery system and the sacrifices of the war. However, over 50 percent of the population did not join the war effort with any enthusiasm, and many actively subverted the morale of the soldiers and the strategy of the military.
I have asked many people in China, especially women, if they would sacrifice their sons and daughters to fight Taiwan. The response was an overwhelming no. In fact, most people who talk without fear of the government or their colleagues say that they really do not care about Taiwan. Government authorities aborted a student poll at Beijing University that inquired about attitudes toward Taiwan.
If China's military expenditures and military outcomes of an attack on Taiwan can be linked to economic and human losses, will the wives, mothers and youth of China support this sacrifice?
Second, the military tide turned for the Confederacy when it abandoned its defensive strategy and tried to mount an invasion on the North. The Confederacy's military change of heart had disastrous consequences for the nation and led to international blockades and non-recognition.
If China seriously believes it can attack Taiwan without its own economic implosion and international isolation, then the leaders are even more ignorant of reality than Davis was for the Confederacy.
The South suffered from the consequences of the Civil War for over a century. If China compares itself to this war, it should consider the consequences of acting like the Confederacy.
It amazed me that no American in the audience with Bush questioned Hu's Civil War parallel. Hopefully now he will not be able to make this oft-stated analogy without someone raising an objection.
Richard Kagan is a history professor at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS