The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “united front” tactics continue to distort history to form a narrative conducive to CCP control over territories it lays claim to.
On Friday, the Council of Indigenous Peoples criticized former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Yosi Takun (孔文吉) for remarks he made during an event hosted by China’s Yunnan Minzu University. The remarks suggested that Taiwan’s indigenous people — who are of Austronesian descent, speak Austronesian languages, and have an independent identity and culture — are part of China’s minority cultures.
The council is right to push back against the obvious distortion targeting Austronesian people in Taiwan who have lived here for approximately 15,000 years.
The idea is so easily refutable that perhaps it is better to look behind the distortions and understand why the CCP is resorting to such unfounded claims.
The root of the problem is that the CCP is attempting to forge a nation state out of territory the Republic of China (ROC) inherited from the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which was subsequently transferred to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) when the CCP defeated the KMT in 1949, Chinese-Australian historian and Sinologist Wang Gungwu (王賡武) said.
The concept of the nation state developed in the late 18th century was formulated within the context of the majority of the countries in Europe already encompassing people who spoke the same language, had the same historical narrative and probably shared the same religion, and turning the people within the borders of each country into a nation state was relatively straightforward, Wang said.
Many Asian countries did not have this luxury, as their borders did not evolve along national lines, but were drawn according to the requirements of colonial masters, he said. Japan was one exception. China had a different quandary: The ROC in 1912 inherited the borders of the Manchu Qing empire, which was not a Han empire, but a Manchu-Mongol one, and covered territory beyond countries with majority Han Chinese populations.
Taiwan was not part of this territory: The Manchu-Qing empire had ceded it to Japan in 1895, and Japan did not relinquish control over Taiwan until 1945.
ROC founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) looked for a way to organize his inherited borders as a republic modeled on the two successful republics of the day, the US and France, to govern diverse groups of people who had been controlled by an imperial state. Wang called this a “mammoth task.”
The CCP is still struggling to work out how to control diverse groups who have never belonged to a nation in an ethnic — as opposed to political — sense, and to claim legitimacy for that project, Wang said.
If it fails to do so, it runs the risk of losing control over the territories it now controls through fragmentation along defined national, historical and ethnic lines, as happened in the late 20th century with the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said.
Putting all of these groups under the umbrella of the “Chinese nation” (中華民族), a term invented by Sun and co-opted by the CCP, is a solution, but ethnic groups and nations such as the Tibetans, Uighurs, Taiwanese and Austronesian indigenous groups in Taiwan are not buying it.
That is, the roots of the “united front” attempts to absorb Taiwan’s indigenous people into its orbit extend beyond the CCP’s fabricated claims over Taiwan; they strike at the heart of the CCP’s legitimacy and the party’s definition of the PRC as a nation state.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taiwan and India are important partners, yet this reality is increasingly being overshadowed in current debates. At a time when Taiwan-India relations are at a crossroads, with clear potential for deeper engagement and cooperation, the labor agreement signed in February 2024 has become a source of friction. The proposal to bring in 1,000 migrant workers from India is already facing significant resistance, with a petition calling for its “indefinite suspension” garnering more than 40,000 signatures. What should have been a straightforward and practical step forward has instead become controversial. The agreement had the potential to serve as a milestone in
China has long given assurances that it would not interfere in free access to the global commons. As one Ministry of Defense spokesperson put it in 2024, “the Chinese side always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight entitled to countries under international law.” Although these reassurances have always been disingenuous, China’s recent actions display a blatant disregard for these principles. Countries that care about civilian air safety should take note. In April, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) canceled a planned trip to Eswatini for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s coronation and the 58th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic
RSS