Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representative Lu Li-an (盧麗安), who was born in Kaohsiung, attracted considerable attention at the CCP’s 19th National Congress, which began on Wednesday last week and closed on Tuesday.
Lu said in an interview at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People that she was proud of her Taiwanese and Chinese heritage and called for an end to opposition caused by outdated ideologies.
“You can of course love Taiwan and the mainland at the same time,” she said in Hoklo, also known as Taiwanese.
During World War II, Japan and China were enemies. At the time, Chinese who colluded with Japan to promote their self-interests were called “Chinese traitors.”
Today, Taiwan and China are hostile toward each other.
Although there is no armed conflict between the two, China has never stopped its diplomatic and economic strategies aimed at cornering Taiwan. The two are basically at war.
If we are to follow the standards of Chinese, then any Taiwanese who works for Chinese for selfish reasons should be called a “Taiwanese traitor.”
China has never changed its policy on Taiwan and its ultimate goal continues to be the annexation of the latter. Like heavily armed bandits that pick on innocent and unarmed people, China would find 100 reasons to justify its actions when condemned by its victims.
Under those circumstances, how can anybody related to the victims work for the bandits and claim to be proud of both their own family and of the criminal that hurts them?
If Taiwan and China really were two parts of one and the same country, Lu’s statement would at least make sense, since she would have been born a citizen of both places.
If that were the case, it would only be normal for people on both sides to prefer unification and to be friendly toward each other.
However, Taiwan and China have never been the same country.
Taiwanese independence supporters have already proved, with plenty of evidence, that, legally speaking, Taiwan and China are indeed two separate nations.
If the two sides were to become one nation, in addition to the legal problem, the question of whether Taiwanese are emotionally open to that would be an even bigger issue. If people feel close enough to each other, even two separate countries can become one.
The reason Taiwan and China cannot become one nation is that Chinese have never treated Taiwanese as their compatriots.
Following World War II, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) took over Taiwan and told all Taiwanese that they were Chinese, yet they never really treated them as if they were Chinese. The KMT government at the time could be characterized by the following traits: First, Taiwanese and Chinese were treated unequally; second, the KMT tried to erase Taiwanese culture.
It is obvious that for Chinese politicians, Taiwan was a colony rather than a part of the country.
Even after democratization, Chinese have continued to work to prevent Taiwanese from gaining political control. They would rather work with the CCP — whom they used to attack and refer to as “communist bandits” — than allow Taiwanese to gain power.
It is quite clear that Chinese — both in Taiwan and in China — want to rule Taiwan, although it certainly never has been a part of China.
hen Mao-hsiung is a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor and chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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