Sat, Jun 25, 2022 page8

• The Liberty TImes Editorial: China’s ‘truth’ spun out of recast lies

  • • 
    • 
    • 

  China’s “peaceful rise” during the past few years has been marked by repeated instances of aggressive and unreasonable behavior, to the extent that the uncouth language and fallacious arguments spouted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatchiks no longer even make headlines.

  However, several recent statements by senior CCP officials have been so absurd as to raise eyebrows anew, and even to elicit international ridicule.

  First, there was the remark by Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang (秦剛) during a visit to Texas at the beginning of this month that “Taiwan has been part of China for 1,800 years — 1,500 years prior to the foundation of America.”

  A fresh instance of historical revisionism came to light last week when it was reported that the puppet government Beijing installed in Hong Kong is preparing new textbooks denying that the territory was once a British colony.

  Beijing last year said that it considers the South China Sea to be Chinese “internal waters” and that it does not recognize the right of foreign vessels to pass through the sea.

  Earlier this month, Beijing went even further, with its officials reportedly telling US officials in confidential settings that it does not regard the Taiwan Strait an international waterway.

  Following Qin’s statement, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state media such as the Xinhua news agency attempted to provide a historical justification for the ambassador’s assertion by citing an obscure possible reference to Taiwan in the History of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), written during the Jin Dynasty in the year 289.

  The book supposedly refers to Taiwan as “Yizhou” (夷洲, “land of the barbarians”), saying that the term was in use during the Three Kingdoms period from 220 to 280.

  However, it is impossible to verify whether “Yizhou,” or the later term “Liuqiu” (流求) from the Sui Dynasty (581-617), refers to Taiwan, the Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawa, Japan) or another island in the South China Sea.

  Moreover, it barely needs pointing out that just because an ancient Chinese text has, for argument’s sake, referenced “Taiwan,” one cannot extrapolate that “Taiwan has belonged to China since ancient times.”

  This would be like Beijing proposing that “Cambodia has belonged to China since ancient times,” based on the existence of The Customs of Cambodia (真臘風土記), a written account of a Yuan Dynasty official’s sojourn in Angkor between 1296 and 1297.

  However, it should not be surprising that the ambassador made this absurd claim.

  Qin does not have the academic background or understanding of modern democratic societies that might be expected of a diplomat posted to Washington, although he does possess impeccable “wolf warrior” credentials.

  Not long after assuming his post, Qin said during a US-China diplomatic meeting conducted via videoconference in July last year: “If we are unable to resolve our differences, then please shut up.”

  Qin’s decidedly undiplomatic words and body language reportedly stunned the other participants. His ahistorical claptrap about Taiwan, expressed during an address to the Asia Society Texas Center in Houston, displayed an astounding lack of self-awareness and turned China’s amateur historian ambassador into a laughing stock.

  The CCP’s fabrications and fantastical delusions are not limited to ancient history. Recent history is also enlisted by the party as a tool to further its political aims in its attempt to deny Hong Kong’s British heritage.

  The new textbooks state that the UK “exercised colonial rule” over the territory — a distinction that craft’s a claim to unbroken sovereignty over Hong Kong.

  The state-run Hong Kong Museum of History has also deleted its description of the territory’s former status as a British colony.

  Draft excerpts of the new textbook posted online state that colonial powers can simultaneously possess “local sovereignty” and “governing power,” but the UK only exercised the latter and not the former over Hong Kong.

  The CCP calls the Opium War treaties that ceded Hong Kong to the UK “unequal” and asserts that China never relinquished the territory.

  However, Article 1 of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration states: “The Government of the People’s Republic of China declares that to recover the Hong Kong area ... it has decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 1997.”

  Article 2 states: “The Government of the United Kingdom declares that it will restore Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China with effect from 1 July 1997.”

  The declaration uses the phrase “resume the exercise of sovereignty,” which implies that China ceded sovereignty to Britain, and says that the UK would “restore” the territory to China, signifying a transfer.

  Beijing’s case is further weakened by the fact that the UN referred to Hong Kong as a colony since 1972.

  The modus operandi consistently employed by the CCP is to set the tone and characterize people, places and events according to the political need of the day, take action relative to the identified political need, and add a propaganda offensive to rationalize the party’s actions and achieve its aims.

  To ensure that Hong Kongers can never again attempt to claim the right to self-determination, the CCP must demonstrate that the territory was always part of China and never a British colony. To achieve this goal, it frames Hong Kong’s 2019 anti-extradition bill movement as “violent terrorist activity” whose participants must be hunted down.

  Beijing plays the same trick in maritime disputes. To bolster Beijing’s regional territorial claims, including over Taiwan, the CCP reframes the South China Sea as Chinese internal waters and repudiates the Taiwan Strait’s status as international waters.

  The facts are always distorted by the CCP to fit its political imperatives.

  The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines “internal waters” as the sovereign territory of the nation state in which they are located. A nation state has complete legal jurisdiction over internal waters within its borders and is thus not required to allow the passage of foreign vessels.

  The South China Sea is a strategically important waterway and a vitally important international shipping lane, and it contains abundant seabed resources.

  From Japan’s perspective, it is a maritime lifeline on which its economy relies. The calamitous consequences for Japan of Beijing’s maritime claims are easy to predict. Tokyo has presented a diplomatic note to the UN rejecting China’s claims and denouncing its efforts to limit freedom of navigation and overflight.

  Additionally, Beijing broke its public reassurances over land reclamation and island-building activities in the sea, disregarded a 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in favor of the Philippines over its maritime dispute with Manila, and continues to assert maximalist territorial claims, citing the baseless “nine-dash line.”

  Beijing has practically turned the South China Sea into an internal waterway and militarized it through a process of salami-slicing.

  The international community must stop tolerating Beijing’s wild territorial ambitions before it is too late. Leniency and appeasement only serves to further whet China’s appetite.

  Emboldened by the lack of pushback from the international community over its actions in the South China Sea, Beijing has upped the ante and advanced a new claim — that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway.

  The goal is the same. Beijing is seeking to turn the Strait into China’s internal waterway, which would give Beijing the “right” to obstruct US and other foreign naval vessels from conducting freedom of navigation operations, and pave the way for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan.

  US President Joe Biden’s administration has refused to accept Beijing’s groundless claim over the Taiwan Strait and is formulating countermeasures.

  As Taiwan would bear the brunt of a successful “inlandization” of the Strait, the government must define the threat as a major national security challenge and formulate an appropriate response.

  With the Taiwan Strait, Beijing is following the well-honed and daring strategy of issuing a slogan — “the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway” — expanding the slogan into a treatise, and then taking overt and covert actions.

  Beijing then observes the international response to its actions, and based on what it sees, decides whether to continue its advance or hold its ground.

  The CCP adheres to the “big lie theory” advocated by German Nazi Party head propagandist Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

  The CCP is also channeling Napoleon Bonaparte’s maxim that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.”

  The Chinese ambassador’s invented historical claim over Taiwan and Beijing’s revisionist stance on the Taiwan Strait represent an intensification of its cognitive warfare strategy against Taipei.

  Taiwan must not underestimate the significance of Beijing’s most recent assault against reality and its promotion of a new “big lie.”

  Translated by Edward Jones
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Palmeiras hopes for club cup win

  • 2

    Taiwan to see nine extended holidays in 2026

  • 3

    Pegatron ranks last in Greenpeace report

  • 4

    Taiwan blacklists Huawei and SMIC

  • 5

    Ma Ying-jeou’s forum speech regrettable, MAC says