As a famous US professor once told an up-and-coming Taiwanese academic, there is something about Taiwan that makes even the best and the brightest of minds stop thinking.
Time and again, otherwise intelligent academics, journalists, writers and government officials have managed to get it all wrong when it comes to Taiwan. The fact that a country whose 23 million people would make it the ninth-largest country in Europe by population size, and whose economy is among the 20 largest economies globally, is so regularly misunderstood is predominantly the result of Chinese propaganda and the willingness of other countries to allow Beijing to get away with its lies.
Not only is Taiwan misrepresented, but the biases that are stacked against it prevent its 23 million people from deciding their own future. So entrenched has this handicap become that Taiwan, not China, is often regarded as the troublemaker, even though it is Beijing, not Taipei, that threatens war — against Taiwan, Japan and the US — over the question of its sovereignty. It is as if Czechoslovakia or Poland, not Nazi Germany, were the true instigators of World War II in Europe.
Even though relations across the Taiwan Strait have in some ways improved since 2008, Taiwan continues to be denied the choices that a democratic nation should be allowed to make about its destiny. As if this were not enough, academics continue to regard it as an uncontrollable wildcard and the likeliest source of conflict — perhaps even nuclear conflict — between China and the US.
Such fallacies were again present in a major report issued last week on nuclear weapons and the future of US-China relations.
Released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, the report says that Taiwan “is the contingency in which nuclear weapons would most likely become a major factor.”
Quoting defense analyst Richard Betts, the report states: “Neither great power can fully control developments that might ignite a crisis. This is a classic recipe for surprise, miscalculation and uncontrolled escalation.”
Once again, Taiwan stands accused of endangering the peace because of its desire for self-determination, as enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taiwan is the uncontrollable variable that must be controlled, even if this goes against the wishes of 23 million souls, to avoid nuclear war, when in reality, it is the two great powers, pace Betts, that have full control of the developments that might ignite a crisis. The decision to use force and to escalate over Taiwan — and thereby risk miscalculation leading to nuclear war with the US — lies fully in Beijing’s camp, which controls the People’s Liberation Army, its nuclear arsenal and the Second Artillery Corps.
Nobody in his right mind would blame Prague or Warsaw today for creating the uncontrollable uncertainties that led to Berlin’s decision to invade, which was followed by European, and eventually US, declarations of war against Germany. The decision to escalate lay fully in the Reichstag (and also with Moscow, with regard to Poland), not among the peaceful peoples of European countries whose only wish was to be left alone.
Even if the conclusions were reached inadvertently by the authors of the CSIS report, they nevertheless contribute to added pressure on Taiwanese to forsake their right to self-determination. It tells them that they, ultimately, would be responsible for potentially sparking a devastating nuclear war between two superpowers should they choose to behave irresponsibly by seeking to exercise their right as human beings.
Everybody knows that Beijing is the aggressor in the Taiwan Strait, yet experts all over the world continue to pretend that it is otherwise, that somehow Taiwanese are not the victims, but the cause of ongoing tensions, and perhaps of Armageddon.
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension. Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history. Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting
When I reminded my 83-year-old mother on Wednesday that it was the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she replied: “Yes, it was the day when my family was broken.” That answer captures the paradox of modern China. To most Chinese in mainland China, Oct. 1 is a day of pride — a celebration of national strength, prosperity and global stature. However, on a deeper level, it is also a reminder to many of the families shattered, the freedoms extinguished and the lives sacrificed on the road here. Seventy-six years ago, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東)