Li Kexin (李克新), minister at the Chinese embassy in the US, said in Washington on Dec. 8 that the day US Navy vessels arrive in Kaohsiung will be the day that China “unifies” Taiwan with armed force. This naked threat of military action was criticized in Taiwan and internationally.
The Global Times, a small Chinese nationalist newspaper that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) likes to read, immediately published an article in support of Li with the headline “Forceful unification of Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army not a threat.”
The article warned that “Taiwanese authorities should not take this too far; we told you long ago that Taiwan now is the Beiping of 1949, completely surrounded by the mainland.”
This is the fearless statement of an ignorant person, comparable to Adolf Hitler’s arrogance in taking over much of Europe.
Neither Li, nor Hu Xijin (胡錫進), the Global Times’ editorial writer, know their history; they ignore realities and are lost in the fantasy of “national unification.”
Today’s Taiwan is not the Beiping of 1949.
First, in the middle of the Chinese Civil War, the US became aware of the corruption and ineptness of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. Convinced that the KMT would lose the war, the US stopped supporting them.
On Aug. 5, 1949, the US Department of State issued the China White Paper, officially announcing that the US would no longer support the KMT regime.
In a memorandum to then-US president Harry Truman, then-US secretary of state Dean Acheson said US military observers had reported that none of the KMT army’s defeats in 1948, an important year, had been due to a lack of equipment or firepower, and that US observers had detected corruption in Chongqing as early as at the beginning of the war, adding that the corruption had caused the KMT to lose all ability to resist its opponent.
Acheson also said that the KMT’s leaders were unable to respond to a changing situation, its army had lost its will to fight, the KMT government lacked public support and there would be no need to defeat its army, as it was already beginning to disintegrate.
On the contrary, Taiwan today is an ally of the US and Taiwanese enjoy visa-free entry to the US, something that is causing a great deal of envy in China.
In addition, the US uses domestic legislation in the form of the Taiwan Relations Act to establish that the US will offer Taiwan military assistance, and if Taiwan is invaded by another country, it is unlikely that the US will remain on the sidelines.
Second, the situation facing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is completely different from what it was in 1949, when the newly established communist regime was a member of the “great communist family,” and as such received weapons, funding and technological support from the Soviet Union.
For more than 10 years before things turned sour between the Soviet Union and China, the CCP slavishly followed Soviet instructions. The CCP also held itself up as a model third-world country that had fought for its liberation and it found many friends among neighboring countries.
However, today’s China behaves as a “celestial power” that pushes its neighbors around and uses its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to compete with Russia in Central Asia; it no longer has any true friends.
Anyone occupying the moral high ground will find the help they need, but without that moral grounding, any assistance will soon disappear.
China’s clamoring for war with Taiwan will not gain support from any other nation — instead, it will cause resentment among its neighbors.
Third, today’s Taiwanese national identity is very different from the fluid situation in 1949’s Beiping, which was not an independent nation, but an isolated city protected by the warlord Fu Zuoyi (傅作義) — who was by no means controlled by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) — and the city was never under complete control of the KMT government.
It is not surprising that Fu, when he took stock of the situation, chose “peaceful reorganization.”
Beiping residents did not know if they were ruled by the KMT, the communists or a warlord, and they had to resign themselves to fate.
Taiwan today is an independent nation that has existed for more than 70 years. It has been a democracy for almost 30 years, its government is elected by the public and enjoys strong public support, and most of the 23 million Taiwanese are willing to keep their nation safe and secure.
If Li and the Global Times think that a sharp tongue will make Taiwanese submit to slavery, they have sorely underestimated the courage of Taiwanese and their determination to defend their independent and democratic way of life.
Yu Jie is an exiled Chinese dissident writer.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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