The symbols of Taiwan’s national sovereignty — the national flag, emblem and anthem — have long since disappeared from international sport contests, academic conferences and international organizations under pressure from China. The country’s name is often left off the list of options for online registration. The Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) belong to Toucheng Township (頭城) in Yilan County, yet the nation is incapable of protecting them. Now even the air defense identification zone and the Taipei Flight Information Region are being intruded upon by those of China and Japan.
What is the national identity, and what is the nature of the relationship with the other side of the Taiwan Strait? Under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, these questions have become mired in confusion.
The whole world calls the other side “China,” and it also calls itself “China,” but the Ma government says we cannot call it “China.” The whole world calls this nation “Taiwan,” and the other side of the Taiwan Strait does as well, but the Ma government says Taiwanese cannot call it “Taiwan.” According to the Ma administration, the two sides are not exactly one country, but they are not two countries either. There is no such definition in any dictionary of political science, so perhaps the whole thing should be called the KMT’s “sovereignty identification zone.”
Experts on nationalism agree that the way countries are portrayed on maps, and the terms that the media use to differentiate between their country and other countries are essential elements by which a modern state can mark its national identity and pass it on to the next generation. However, with the KMT in charge, it has become difficult to find a map that shows the Republic of China (ROC) as an independent country. Rarely these days do the KMT-supporting pan-blue media stress the ROC’s independent nationhood, as distinct from the People’s Republic of China.
The level of protocol applied when welcoming foreign guests is part and parcel of a nation’s foreign policy and a symbolic expression of national sovereignty. When Ma’s government first welcomed then-Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) to Taiwan in 2008, the level of security he was accorded was even higher than that given to the president. All that was missing was the nets that have recently been erected to protect Ma from flying shoes.
During ARATS Chairman Chen Deming’s (陳德銘) visit over the past few days, senior KMT figures have once again turned out in force to welcome the Chinese envoy. Their eagerness to flatter Chen Deming makes them look like imperial subjects kowtowing and paying tribute to an imperial envoy.
One cannot help but ask where it will all end. Perhaps aerial combat might one day break out over the Diaoyutai Islands, with hostilities extending into the Taipei Flight Information Region, yet news reports on CNN and the BBC will tell us that the ROC Air Force took no part in the action and that the ROC government merely expressed “regret” over the incident.
It would be reminiscent of 1905, when various battles of the Russo-Japanese War were waged on Chinese territory in Port Arthur and Dalian and in the Bohai Gulf. Apparently the Zongli Yamen — the Qing Empire’s equivalent of a foreign affairs ministry — sent telegrams to the great powers expressing strong “regret” over these circumstances.
As the saying goes, history often repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.
Wei Hung-wu is an adjunct associate professor in National Chengchi University’s political science department.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
RSS