Wansui (萬歲, “long live,” literally “10,000 years old”) is the most feudal, hypocritical and cheap phrase. No state, government or dynasty exists for 10,000 years.
Still, members of the postwar generation that received party-state-dictated education share a deeply felt memory of chanting “long live the Republic of China (ROC)” together with Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and cheering “long live President Chiang,” despite not understanding his Ningbo dialect of Mandarin Chinese.
Many years have passed since Chiang died in 1975. In China’s history books, the ROC existed for 38 years, one year longer than the Sui Dynasty (隋朝), (581-618) and not even comparable to the Qing (清朝), (1644-1911) that Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) wanted to expel and that ruled for 267 years, or the Yuan (元朝), (1279-1368), which ruled for 97 years.
Unbelievably, even after Taiwan’s democratization, some people still chant the decades-old slogan “long live the ROC,” using it as their political platform.
For the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a foreign party that never acclimatized itself to Taiwan, the habit of using this cheap slogan is so ingrained that its presidential candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), says he does not want votes from people who support Taiwanese independence.
Han’s statement may make him sound strong, but it is misdirected. When Han was just two years old, Chiang signed a joint communique with the US, in which he renounced the use of force to “reconquer the mainland.” That was when Chiang’s version of Taiwanese independence started.
At the time, Chiang emphasized that he was China’s legitimate ruler and said it was his sacred mission to “reconquer the mainland and liberate and rescue fellow compatriots.” Then-US secretary of state John Foster Dulles made it plain to Chiang that he did not have to renounce the “mission,” but should not try to accomplish it by force.
Without US military support, Chiang lacked the strength to retake China, and the US made it clear that it would not use its armed forces to help him at the risk of starting a war.
To maintain the facade, Chiang could not publicly renounce the use of force, so he resorted to vague language, stating: “The task of recovering the mainland will be accomplished by 70 percent political and 30 percent military effort.” He also said he would not return to China unless a revolution broke out and a new regime invited the KMT government back.
After Chiang died, his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was determined to protect Taiwan, so he proposed the “three noes” policy of no contact, no compromise and no negotiation to avoid surrender. From this point, the ROC title became a fig leaf for the exiled KMT government’s monopoly on power and its refusal to democratize, but Taiwan’s eventual democratization ended this charade.
The definition of “Taiwanese independence” is ambiguous, but everyone knows that it means to “refuse unification.” If the phony politicians who chant “long live the ROC” had real backbone, they would say: “I don’t want those who oppose Taiwan’s annexation by China to vote for me, I only want the votes of those who want unification.”
James Wang is a senior journalist.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
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
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS