Gilles Chartrand's letter (Letter, March 18, Page 8) highlights most Westerners' complete ignorance about Taiwan and China. While he notes that "Quebec and Taiwan are both democratic societies," he then adds the curious statement that "They both have a percentage of their citizenry that wants to leave a larger entity."
For Chartrand's information, Taiwan is not a part of China. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on Oct. 1, 1949, that nation has ruled Taiwan for a total of 0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds.
Admittedly, there is much confusion about this aspect, since the government in Taiwan continues to call the country the "Republic of China" (ROC). When the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (
However, in order for such an interpretation to be true, then US president Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur should have had the authority to transfer the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan to the Chinese nationalists. In fact, they had no such authority.
When Truman and MacArthur drafted General Order No. 1, the only authority they had was to direct Chiang's military forces to come to Taiwan to accept the surrender of Japanese troops. The surrender ceremonies mark the beginning of the military occupation of Taiwan, nothing more nothing less.
Since all military attacks against Taiwan (and indeed against the four main Japanese islands) from 1941 to 1945 were conducted by US military forces, it is clear that the US was the "conqueror." In the military occupation of Taiwan, the US was the principal occupying power. In contrast, the military troops under Chiang were only a subordinate occupying power.
The PRC was founded in the fall of 1949, and high-ranking officials of the ROC government fled to Taiwan to become a government in exile. Hence, even up to the present day, the ROC only has "effective territorial control" over Taiwan, but does not hold Taiwan's territorial sovereignty. That territorial sovereignty is held by the US Military Government.
In summary, if Taiwan wants to be independent, it should be talking to members of the US Congress (who have jurisdiction over Taiwan under the territorial clause of the US Constitution), and not holding street demonstrations against the misguided policies of the PRC, or listening to the ramblings of uninformed political commentators who suggest that Taiwan has a need to clearly establish its separate identity from the PRC.
Roger Lin
Taipei
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The US Department of State on Thursday last week made major changes to the US-Taiwan relations fact sheet on its Web site. The update is a noticeable departure from the previous text, which had remained largely unaltered for decades. The previous fact sheet began with a summary on the US-Taiwan relationship: “The US and Taiwan enjoy a robust unofficial relationship.” The first sentence now says: “As a leading democracy and technological powerhouse, Taiwan is a key US partner in the Indo-Pacific.” The previous text continued with Beijing’s claims over Taiwan: “In the Joint Communique, the United States recognized the government of the
RSS