Thu, Jul 07, 2005 page8

• Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese

  • By Chen Ching-chih陳清池
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Taiwan does belong to Taiwanese in spite of China's repeated claim. One of the most frequently heard Chinese arguments is that "Taiwan has belonged to China since antiquity." Such and such a territory has always belonged to China is probably the most commonly used rationale for the Chinese territorial claim. The Chinese are plainly deceiving themselves whenever they make such a ridiculous claim.

  A decade ago, a retired colleague of mine served as a visiting professor at a university in Manchuria. The American professor and his wife enjoyed entertaining his graduate students at their apartment. One night, the professor led a discussion centering on Manchurian history and culture. One of the students asserted that "The northeast has belonged to China since ancient times," and his collegues enthusiastically supported the argument.

  Having strived to teach his Chinese students how to think rather than what to think, the professor, who was also well read in Chinese history, asked them to explain why Manchuria lies outside of the famed Great Wall that was constructed and reconstructed since the third century to defend China from the nomadic "barbarians." All the Chinese at the party were speechless.

  Chinese education and propaganda authorities have drilled standard answers to important historical and cultural issues into the minds and hearts of the Chinese to such an extent that the Chinese have come to accept them without question.

  In addition to Manchuria, the Chinese of course have also claimed that Tibet, Eastern Turkistan (Xinjiang) and Mongolia as well as Taiwan have always belonged to China. The fact is, however, that none of them belonged to China prior to 1644, when the Ming dynasty came to an end. It was the Manchu army that conquered Ming China after breaking through the Great Wall. It then used military means to incorporate surrounding territories, including Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, over the following decades. As a result of the Manchu-led expansion, the island of Taiwan was also bought within the fold of the new empire in 1683.

  Partly due to challenges coming from the expanding West, the Manchu Qing empire, not unlike the Ottoman empire, began to disintegrate from the middle of the 19th century, and ultimately broke up in the early 20th century. Defeated militarily, the empire lost Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842, Outer Manchuria north of the Amur River to Czarist Russia in 1858-1860, and Taiwan to Imperial Japan in 1895.

  Ultimately when the Qing Dynasty fell in 1912, the bulk of what was left of the Manchu empire became a republic, while both Outer Mongolia and Tibet declared independence. With the protection of the Soviet Union, Outer Mongolia has remained independent. Unfortunately, deprived of British support and patronage after the British withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent when India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, Tibet was annexed militarily in the 1950s by the People's Republic of China (PRC), which was established in 1949.

  In the case of Taiwan, it is crystal clear that it has not belonged to China since ancient times. China was not even the first country to have political control over part, if not the entirety of the island. The Dutch established the first government over the western portion of Taiwan in 1624. In 1662, however, the Dutch were expelled from Taiwan by the military force of pirate-general Cheng Chen-kung (鄭成功), better known to the Westerners as Koxinga, who established a kingdom in Taiwan.

  Cheng's naval activities against the southeast coast of the newly established Qing empire in China contributed to his ultimate destruction in 1683. To prevent Taiwan from ever becoming an anti-Manchu base again, the Manchu court decided to bring Taiwan under its control. For the next two centuries, Manchu rule over Taiwan was rather loose and ineffective one. Even so, the Qing Dynasty had to cede the island to Japan as a result of suffering a humiliating military defeat in the hands of a modernized Japan in 1895.

  While Japan possessed Taiwan, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) made known to the international community through journalist Edgar Snow, who published his book Red Star over China in 1937 after having interviewed Mao and other Chinese Communist leaders, that Taiwan, like Korea, should eventually become independent of Japanese colonial rule.

  Other Chinese leaders such as Tai Chi-tao (戴季陶) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had expressed the same view earlier. Clearly, the Chinese were too preoccupied with their country's own problems, particularly Japan's territorial ambitions and expansion in China, to do more than just express their wish to see the eventual break-up of Japan's colonial empire.

  When the end of the Japanese empire did come, it was chiefly due to the military might of the US. Japan renounced her sovereignty over Taiwan as well as other overseas territories after its defeat in the summer of 1945. The renouncement of sovereignty over Taiwan was legally reaffirmed in the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty that Japan signed with the US and 34 other countries.

  Without specifying a recipient country, the treaty can only be -- and must be -- interpreted as leaving sovereignty over Taiwan to the people of Taiwan.

  Repeatedly claiming, particularly since the 1970s, that there is only one China and that Taiwan is its inalienable "sacred territory," the PRC government, with its rising economic, political as well as military power, has been able to compel an increasing number of countries to acknowledge, if not accept, its claim.

  To demonstrate its determination to annex Taiwan, the National People's Congress even unanimously passed on March 14 the "Anti-secession" Law authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" to annex Taiwan if it should strive to become fully independent. The fact is that Taiwan has been fully independent of the PRC since 1949.

  Regarding China's so-called "sacred territory," one should take note of the fact that the Chinese have recently accepted Russian sovereignty over what most Chinese had for long dreamed of recovering -- its hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of "sacred territory" stolen by Czarist Russia in the mid-19th century as a result of the treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860).

  Clearly capable of being pragmatic and flexible when confronting a more powerful neighbor, the PRC has finally come to settle its territorial disputes by peaceful means with Russia. It is time that China also work to settle peacefully its disputes with Taiwan, rather than repeatedly threatening to use force.

  China's belligerency toward Taiwan threatens peace and stability in East Asia and has consequently compelled Japan to join with the US in insisting a peaceful settlement of disputes across the Taiwan Strait.

  It will be to the benefit of China as well as to other countries when Beijing respects human rights, well-established international practices and the wish of the freedom-loving Taiwanese to be masters of their own destiny. When peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is assured, the Chinese government can then devote its full efforts to China's continuing economic development and to the care of its people's well-being.

  Chen Ching-chih is professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a researcher with the Los Angeles-based Institute for Taiwanese Studies.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Chinese technicians join airport MRT project

  • 2

    A train for whom? Is a new monorail helpful for Cairo?

  • 3

    Apple is giving Intel’s turnaround some momentum

  • 4

    Uncrewed US craft transits the Taiwan Strait

  • 5

    Taiwan assessing recruiting from Eswatini: ministry