China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence.
The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng Rong (彭榮), to attend the Taiwanese Communist Party’s founding conference.
On July 16, 1936, then-CCP leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) spoke of his party’s position on Taiwan in an interview with American reporter Edgar Snow.
“It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty south of the Great Wall... We do not, however, include Korea, formerly a Chinese Colony, but ... if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Taiwan,” Mao said.
More of the interview is included in Snow’s book Red Star Over China.
In October 1938, Mao addressed Taiwan in the “Report to the Enlarged Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,” titled “The new stage in the development of the national war of resistance against Japan and the anti-Japanese national united front.”
Mao encouraged “the oppressed nations in Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere” to strive for independence. He said that “the broad masses of soldiers and people of the two great nations of China and Japan and the oppressed nations of Korea and Taiwan should undertake vast and persistent common efforts, and establish a joint anti-invasion united front.”
In June 1941, one of the CCP’s other top leaders, Zhou Enlai (周恩來), wrote an article in the CCP’s Xinhua Daily titled “The Nation First, the State First,” in which he said that China, as well as pursuing its own independence and sovereignty, should also support the independence and liberation movements of other nations and countries.
These liberation causes included the anti-Japanese movements in Korea and Taiwan, and the struggles of nations and countries in the Balkans and Africa against German and Italian aggression, Zhou wrote.
On April 23, 1945, the CCP convened its Seventh National Congress, at which it released the document “Congratulatory message to the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China from party members from Taiwan and other countries residing in Yanan.” The “Taiwan and other countries” whose party members signed the congratulatory message included Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and Burma.
That message clearly shows that the CCP gave long-term support to the independence movements of several East Asian nations, including Taiwan. (See the May 1, 1945, issue of the CCP’s Liberation Daily)
On Feb. 28, 1947, the 228 Incident broke out in Taiwan. One week later, on March 8, the Liberation Daily published an editorial that quoted a radio speech by Mao.
“The armed forces led by our Communist Party of China fully support the people of Taiwan in their struggle against Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT]. We support independence for Taiwan. We support Taiwan establishing the country that it demands,” he said.
In those days, the CCP supported independence for Taiwan, but now it wants to severely punish “Taiwanese independence die-hards.” What a contradiction there is between history and the present-day reality.
Speaking of history, many people who are ignorant of it still use it to draw false analogies. For example, a certain “well-paid spokesperson of the CCP” who does not know much about the history of Nazism nonetheless used it to label President William Lai (賴清德), one of the most anti-Nazi people you could imagine.
Also recently, a newspaper that serves as a mouthpiece of the CCP in Taiwan published an article lauding China for landing a spacecraft on the moon and collecting rock and soil samples. The article went on to say that Taiwan is still stuck in the “Bluebird movement” — protests against legislative reform bills proposed by KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers.
Comparing these two things is ridiculous enough in itself, but the author went further, comparing the Bluebird movement to the Cultural Revolution that the CCP launched in the 1960s.
Does the author not realize how many people died during Mao’s decade-long Cultural Revolution? Veteran CCP general and politician Ye Jianying (葉劍英) revealed at an internal meeting that the Cultural Revolution led to the persecution of 100 million people and the deaths of 20 million.
Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), who emerged as China’s top leader after Mao’s death, told Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that many people died during the Cultural Revolution.
When Fallaci asked how many, Deng replied: “An exact figure is impossible. It will never be possible.”
Has even one person died in Taiwan’s Bluebird movement? The protests are just a collective expression of opinion about a public issue, which is quite normal in democratic countries. It is simply an ordinary public gathering.
The “CCP mouthpiece,” ignoring that China scored a measly nine out of 100 in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2024 report, bizarrely compared the protests with China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused a huge number of deaths, to slander a citizens’ gathering here in Taiwan, which scored 94 out of 100 in the freedom index.
Although China is capable of landing on the moon, it has not managed to become democratic. I offer the following proposition to China. When your freedom score rises to 90 instead of nine, I will stop being such a “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatist” and join your call for “unification.” Do we have a deal?
Lee Hsiao-feng is an honorary professor at National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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