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
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文). The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left. The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Saturday won the party’s chairperson election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes, becoming the second woman in the seat and the first to have switched allegiance from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to the KMT. Cheng, running for the top KMT position for the first time, had been termed a “dark horse,” while the biggest contender was former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), considered by many to represent the party’s establishment elite. Hau also has substantial experience in government and in the KMT. Cheng joined the Wild Lily Student
Taipei stands as one of the safest capital cities the world. Taiwan has exceptionally low crime rates — lower than many European nations — and is one of Asia’s leading democracies, respected for its rule of law and commitment to human rights. It is among the few Asian countries to have given legal effect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Social Economic and Cultural Rights. Yet Taiwan continues to uphold the death penalty. This year, the government has taken a number of regressive steps: Executions have resumed, proposals for harsher prison sentences
RSS