The substance of history is facts. A piece of history can only be regarded as such if there is tried and trusted documentation to support it.
A media personality recently said in an article that Taiwan was governed by China’s Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties. He also said that Chinese pirate and trader Cheng Chih-lung (鄭芝龍) came to Taiwan in 1621 and asked the Chinese government for permission to emigrate to Taiwan in 1628, and that warlord Koxinga (鄭成功) wrote “Taiwan is an inheritance from our ancestors” in his declaration of war on the Dutch in 1660.
This is all nonsense. None of these are historical facts. Documentation from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties show no records of them governing Taiwan. Cheng followed in Chinese Peter’s (顏思齊) footsteps, arriving in Taiwan in October 1624, two months after the Dutch did so at the Ming’s request. Cheng’s emigration to Taiwan in 1628 was completely fabricated. Koxinga’s 1660 declaration did say “Taiwan is an inheritance from our ancestors,” but it was a lie, without which he had no excuse to start a war with the Dutch.
Taiwan and China have been like two parallel lines, extending independently through time. The two separate lines only met between the 17th and 19th centuries; neither governed the other before or after this period.
Due to political motives, Taiwan’s history has been considerably falsified. Hence, not many people understand the historical facts between Taiwan and China.
Two examples spring to mind:
First, Kublai Khan (忽必烈) sent officials to the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1292 to demand its loyalty to the Yuan Dynasty, but the officials ended up in Taiwan and mistook it for Okinawa, home to the Ryuku Kingdom. After they arrived in Taiwan, they were unable to communicate with the Taiwanese because of the language barrier. After three soldiers were killed, the delegation immediately retreated to Quanzhou in China. How can such a major event, as recorded officially in the Yuan Dynasty’s history, prove that Yuan once governed Taiwan?
Second, the patriarch and also the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chu Yuan-chang (朱元璋), issued a decree on the day of his ascension to the throne in 1638, ordering future generations to restrain themselves from greed and military attacks on other nations, for “a vast territory is not the key to sustainability.” He mentioned 15 nations that must never be invaded by his people and Taiwan was one of them. At that time, Taiwan was called “Little Ryukyu” and this was the first time in history that Taiwan’s political relationship with China was mentioned.
When did Taiwan and China stop being two separate states? It happened between 1683, when Cheng’s Tung Ning Kingdom was annihilated by the Qing Dynasty, and 1895, when Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Qing: a span of 212 years.
However, China was destroyed long before Cheng’s regime in Taiwan was. In 1644, the Ming Dynasty came to an end. China was then ruled by the Qing until 1912. The Qing governed China for 268 years, during which Taiwan and China were both Qing colonies. The definition of colony can be found in UN Resolution 2908, dated Nov. 2, 1972.
Hence, Taiwan and China only shared a portion of history when they were both ruled by the Qing. China did not govern Taiwan; the Qing Dynasty established by Manchus governed Taiwan. Being colonies of the Qing is the only thing that Taiwan and China shared.
Lai Fu-shun is a professor of history at the Chinese Culture University.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
RSS