In 2013, when China first promoted its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and later its Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI), there was a haunting deja vu feeling about it. There still is.
The world, but especially East Asia, needs to look back to June 29, 1940, when Japan made a similar announcement of a grand, idealistic plan for the region: the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
On the surface, the plan seemed perfect for the needs of the region. It would free East Asia from Dutch, French and British colonialism, and all the newly formed nations would prosper under the guidance of Japan.
Taiwan, having been a Japanese colony for 45 years at the time, stood as a model. It had economically prospered and had developed infrastructure. Visitors from China and other countries attended its 40th anniversary celebration as a colony. Politically, Taiwanese were on the verge of being allowed to elect representatives to the Japanese Diet.
However, there were other deeper and unspoken issues. How would all this be done, and could it be done fairly? The devil, as always, was in the details.
Korea, for example, experienced a different fate under Japanese colonial rule. Further, after occupying much of northeastern China and creating Manchukuo, Japan and China had officially been at war since July 1937, and the Soviet Union and Japan had been fighting border wars in Mongolia and Manchuria from 1932 to 1939.
Unknown at the time, the Soviets on Aug. 23, 1939, signed the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of nonaggression with Germany. This freed it to focus on its Japanese front, where on Sept. 15, 1939, a ceasefire was achieved after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol.
With the Molotov pact, Germany and the Soviet Union were free to attack Poland and carve out spheres of influence in eastern Europe. Germany attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and the Soviet Union attacked on Sept. 17 of the same year, after the Khalkhin Gol ceasefire.
Germany’s attack caused Poland’s distant allies, France and the UK, to declare war. Thus, in the spring of 1940, Germany attacked Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, and overran all of them. By the end of June 1940, Germany had invaded large swaths of territory and the Battle of Britain was about to begin.
The Soviet Union, which had already taken its share of Poland, in the same month overran and annexed the Baltic states.
When Japan announced its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, it knew that the European colonial powers were in no position to defend their possessions in Asia.
Japan’s ceasefire with the Soviet Union led to a five-year nonaggression pact between the two in April 1941.
All this put Japan in a good position. Its plans to bring the region under its influence were not done in a vacuum.
By the end of 1940, Germany had achieved its lebensraum space, the Soviet Union had imposed its ideology on states in its vicinity and Japan was making its empire.
Unfortunately, none were satisfied. Throughout, the Soviet Union continued to supply arms and munitions to a divided China against Japan. China was its next target to spread its ideology.
The then-coming year would prove to be the unraveling of all. In May 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and in December, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, hoping to keep the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with its Asian plans. World War II was on.
The war in Europe ended when Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, and three months later, after the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, the Soviet Union broke its pact with Japan and overran Manchuria. It then gave all the captured Japanese arms to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to help win the Chinese Civil War.
Japan was done, but the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were not.
All this brought the world to the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952, of which the Soviet Union, the PRC and the Republic of China (ROC) were not signatory nations.
Why is it important to go through how all these pacts, treaties, ceasefires and secrets played out? Many players are still around, and the PRC is promoting its version of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Japan’s design, with its puppet governments and repressive military power, never really succeeded because Japan never intended things to be democratically equal. It was all about control, and that is what China’s plans are as well.
Here, we will simply focus on the MSRI: For the maritime arm of its plan to be effective, China must be able to control Taiwan and the South China Sea. China has no legal claim over these two, by treaty or otherwise, so it must invent them. Its desire for control creates danger for all.
The past also illustrates the complexity of choosing and switching sides. Nations look out for their own interest, but should those interests be based on long or short-term goals?
When one hears of Japan’s plan for regional prosperity during the war, it stands as a joke. In the name of its portrayed idealistic cause, the worst results followed.
This is what must also be examined in China’s BRI and MSRI. China is not treating its neighbors with benevolence.
Return to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the war in the Pacific: In the treaty, Japan surrendered sovereignty over Taiwan, without naming a recipient. The US, as chief victor in the war, placed the ROC as an occupying force on Taiwan proper. This is the starting point for Taiwan’s reality today.
China’s claims in the South China Sea simply represent its newfound colonial ambition. Other nations must ask: “Was all the effort made during WWII to free Asia from one domineering imperial power done only to turn it over to another?”
A constant, phony meme that one hears from the PRC on the issue of Taiwan is that “Chinese cannot wait forever.”
Implied is that the CCP wants its hegemonic dreams over Asia to be fulfilled by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC, and Taiwan must be included in that.
Who are these alleged Chinese? They are not the people of Hong Kong. Hong Kongers had been promised full democracy by 2017, only to see that go up in smoke. They now experience the cruel hegemony of the CCP.
Those Chinese are not the millions of Uighurs who are imprisoned, tortured and do slave labor in Xinjiang, simply because they want equal rights. They are also not those in Tibet or Inner Mongolia who are experiencing cultural genocide. Tibetans still wonder why the Panchen Lama must be held as prisoner.
When it gets down to it, the “Chinese” is a meme used to represent the one-party state led by the CCP.
This is what all need to observe; this is what is behind China’s idealistic BRI and MSRI; and this is also why Taiwan wants no part in this charade.
This should be the wake-up call for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, as well as those nations that are directly affected by China’s control over their maritime rights.
Even far-away European nations should finally realize how the devastation of COVID-19 did not come from a responsible China.
Taiwan could have immensely helped the world fight the pandemic, but hegemonic China kept it out of the WHO and its World Health Assembly. European nations must realize that in today’s global village, they are not immune; they have lost thousands of people because of the virus, and that is only one item.
Even poorer nations that are struggling economically must see that the BRI and MSRI offer a different danger: that of debt-trap diplomacy. Whatever China says about the initiatives, there is no free lunch.
Taiwan does not need to be told of these dangers. In 2014, it saw through the PRC’s aims when it rejected the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to establish the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China.
This is also why many have repeatedly pointed out that Taiwan needs a new constitution; it must separate Taiwan from the ROC and the PRC.
As for other nations, they had best review all the hype that went into Japan’s plans during WWII; they need to open their eyes to the reality of what China dangles before them. All that glitters is not gold.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
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