All China’s strategies to invade Taiwan are directed at what Beijing perceives to be the fundamental problem preventing unification: Taiwanese identity.
Interference in Taiwan’s education has always been considered key to resolving the nation’s identity problem. In 2008 then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) made six Taiwan policy proposals, known as “Hu’s six points.” The first of these points stresses the “one China” doctrine and the second stresses a “one China” market. They are followed by the foundation of a national identity that comes as a result of closer political and economic integration: Promoting Chinese culture and tightening spiritual bonds.
Then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman John Kuan (關中), while attending a Taiwan Week activity in Hubei Province, summed up the KMT’s intentions by saying that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had a “very heavy responsibility” during his first term to change the previous administration’s promotion of desinicization and Taiwanese independence. The focus of Kuan’s statement was that: “This requires the mainland’s [sic] assistance.”
From the beginning, the KMT has asked the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for help in making Taiwanese education more China-centric. The KMT and CCP have launched long-term talks, likely to involve ideology, which means the KMT is unlikely to act audaciously. The results have not been very smooth.
On Aug. 6, 2012, the international edition of the People’s Daily reported that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were discussing the signing of a cross-strait cultural and educational exchange and cooperation agreement, which some people have called a cultural and educational version of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, in an attempt to institutionalize cultural and educational collaboration.
When Ma took office, his government blocked what they defined as the “desinicization course guideline” that was introduced by the previous administration and formed a special task force to adjust the curriculum. After four years, the 2012 course guidelines were released. No one could have imagined that only two years later, as much as 60 percent of the Taiwanese history curriculum would be changed through what the government termed “minor corrections” due to “errors” and the need for “corrections” and “constitutional compliance.”
Why suddenly make such major changes? In analyzing events, it should be remembered that last year the student-led Sunflower movement broke out. Since Ma’s re-election two years ago, he has behaved more irrationally, but the seeds for change were planted long ago. China was naturally aware of this and anxiously prepared for the worst: A change in government power.
China previously entered into an “alliance” with the KMT as a means of implementing its unification strategies. However, now that the KMT has lost support, Beijing has not used its influence and network in Taiwan to manage things on its own. This is important when trying to understand the reason for the changes to the finalized course guidelines.
Recently the Taiwan Solidarity Union put forward concrete evidence — a list of all the members on the course guideline task force — and accused the Ministry of Education of being China’s “unification education ministry.” This is evidence that the CCP no longer trusts the KMT and is directly managing education-related affairs, rather than relying on the KMT as the go-between.
Christian Fan Jiang is deputy convener of the Northern Taiwan Society’s legal and political group.
Translated by Zane Kheir
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS