Along with other publications, the New York Times has recently published stories about the looming conflict between China and Taiwan. Each country now has missiles pointed at the other. Invariably, mainstream US media start with the notion that the Chinese government sees Taiwan as a "renegade" province or a break away non-state. In almost every instance, the "one China" discussion starts with Taiwan on the defensive. Taiwan's legitimacy as a country -- with a democratic government, an integrated social system and a vibrant culture -- is challenged. Is anyone interested in some historical perspective here?
There is a vast amount of academic research that disproves the "one China" model. Yes, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) were both formed in 1911 and both claimed to speak for all of China, which has created political confusion. After 1947, the KMT wrapped Taiwan into its own version of "one China." In 1943, US president Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin recognized Chiang Kai-shek's (
The historical record is more complex and deserves a careful look. Before 1947, there are virtually no Chinese historical records on Taiwan at all. Prior to the victory of the CCP, Taiwan was never integrated into Chinese historiography. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, Christian missionaries like George Leslie Mackay and the great Japanese linguist Mabuchi Toichi argued that Taiwan had been populated by non-Chinese Aborigines.
In the 1920s mainland communist scholars such as Lin Huixiang (林惠祥) argued that Taiwan was populated by the Min people of southern China, a position dropped in the 1982 version of his book. The group called the Alliance of Taiwanese Aborigines has made the ingenious claim that even if Taiwan were peopled by groups from China many thousands of years ago, we cannot insist that they were Han Chinese. China has many minority groups.
In the 15th century, the Ming dynasty explored Taiwan, with no follow-up. The first explicit Chinese connection to Taiwan was in 1660s, when the great pirate-warrior Koxinga (國姓爺) led the defeated Ming to retreat in Taiwan, eerily repeated by Chiang from 1947 to 1949. From the mid-17th century, Han Chinese farmers cultivated Taiwan -- not for issues of sovereignty and politics, but for economic survival. Many of these Han farmers led the first anti-Western revolt in Asia in 1652, when they threw out the Dutch. It must be embarrassing for the CCP to know that Taiwan represents the original Asian resistance to domination.
Between 1683 and 1843, groups in Taiwan rebelled at least 15 times against their Manchu overlords. Many historians note that by the 1860s, Taiwan was effectively self-governed, as the Qing regime was fed up with putting the island down.
In 1869, some Aboriginal groups contacted the US with the hope of diplomatic relations, and in 1886, with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Taiwan was ceded to Japan "in perpetuity," which only ended with Japan's defeat in 1945.
It is a matter of historical fact that Japan has a stronger claim to legal sovereignty over Taiwan than does the CCP. History is not pretty. The CCP has simply selected notions of continuity with Taiwan which suit its geopolitical goals.
There is virtually no similarity between the history of Hong Kong, Britain, China and Taiwan -- hence the disaster of Hong Kong and Taiwan being put on the same narrow rails of a "return" to China.
People need to honestly ask themselves what this China "is" that makes such poor historical claims? And they need to ask themselves what is this "Taiwanese" historicity that has never been continuous with any Chinese political formation, Communist or otherwise.
We should repudiate now Nixon and Kissinger's Shanghai Communique of 1972 that set forth the contemporary illusion of "one China."
Yes, in the name of "one China," from 1947 to 1988, the KMT did awful things to the ethnic Taiwanese, Aborigines, and Mainlanders. But for 20 years, Taiwan has been a dynamic and democratic society.
If Americans are prepared to see Taiwan militarily defeated by China, then we should be prepared as well for a Mexican invasion of the US southwest, a Russian reconquest of Oregon and Washington and a French reoccupation of Louisiana.
The same principles are at stake. So to say it again: Taiwan has a history and a social, cultural, economic and political life that is not part of "one China."
Taiwan is Taiwan. No government of Taiwan has to ask some higher power for the right to defend their self-created "history."
"One China" should be an idea that is relegated to the "scrapheap of history."
Sande Cohen
Valencia, California
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