Kinmen County’s political geography is provocative in and of itself. A pair of islets running up abreast the Chinese mainland, just 20 minutes by ferry from the Chinese city of Xiamen, Kinmen remains under the Taiwanese government’s control, after China’s failed invasion attempt in 1949.
The provocative nature of Kinmen’s existence, along with the Matsu Islands off the coast of China’s Fuzhou City, has led to no shortage of outrageous takes and analyses in foreign media either fearmongering of a Chinese invasion or using these accidents of history to somehow understand Taiwan.
Every few months a foreign reporter goes to Kinmen and wanders the streets to purchase kitchen knives made from the hundreds of artillery shells that once landed on Kinmen’s shores. They speak of Kinmen as Taiwan’s “front line” against China, and use interviews with local residents as a bellwether for cross-strait relations.
Worse yet, in recent years there has been a trend of analysts with no knowledge of Kinmen or Taiwan’s history declaring that Kinmen is Taiwan’s Crimea, and that China would surely invade it as either a response to a Taiwanese provocation, or as a precursor to a full-scale invasion.
The reality is Kinmen is not indicative of any trends in Taiwanese society because it has never been part of Taiwan historically. China would never invade Kinmen and Matsu, except as part of a larger D-Day style invasion to seize Taiwan proper.
While Taiwan has a complex history involving millennia of Austronesian presence, periods of European colonization, centuries of Hokkien and Hakka settlement, tenuous attempts at Qing peripheral rule, Japanese colonization, and the arrival of the Republic of China (ROC) with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the 1940s, producing the complex Taiwan national identity that exists today, Kinmen and Matsu experienced none of these.
These islets were integral parts of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and parts of modern China as developed under the Republican era. Their people have always identified as Chinese, reflected in their deep-blue political leanings today. These political realities manifest in the existence of “Fujian Province, ROC,” which nominally exists under the ROC government structure to separate Taiwan and these outlying islands. Indeed, the existence of these islands under ROC control has long kept alive the myth that the ROC maintains continuity as the government of “China,” rather than now simply being the constitutional vehicle which democratic Taiwan is stuck with due to China’s threats.
The islands remain under Taiwan’s control not because of their defensive value, but because China chooses not to seize them, which it very easily could. China prefers the islands remain within the ROC as a way of keeping Taiwan linked through the ROC to the so-called “mainland,” along with their die-hard loyal KMT voters. Rather than presenting China with obstacles, they merely present China with numerous opportunities to attempt Trojan horse infiltrations into Taiwan.
Even now, a bill favored by pro-China elements in the legislature attempts to redefine the Taiwan Strait as “domestic waters.” Such a bill would give China a legal framework to block freedom of navigation patrols by foreign navies through the Strait.
Foreign analysts often seek publicity by declaring China would seize Kinmen or Matsu to intimidate Taiwan into surrendering. Not only would such a move likely be welcomed by Taiwan’s deep-green independence advocates, it would be militarily self-defeating. Such a brazen move would mobilize Taiwan and its allies to prepare for war, while also freeing Taiwan of the burden of defending indefensible Kinmen. China would gain no strategic edge by controlling them, while only hardening Taiwanese opinion against its show of force, and possibly even provoke Taiwan into declaring a Republic of Taiwan.
Mao Zedong (毛澤東) understood this well and articulated the Chinese position in a 1960 interview with American journalist Edgar Snow: “we will let Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] keep holding these two islands. We don’t cut off their supplies. If their supplies are insufficient, we can even give them assistance. What we want is the entire Taiwan region, which is Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and it includes Kinmen and Matsu. This is all Chinese territory.”
If the outside world seeks to understand Taiwan, the answers are not to be found in Kinmen and Matsu, but in Chiayi City and Banciao (板橋), Magong (馬公) and Suao (蘇澳), Miaoli and Zuoying (左營), Pingtung and Nantou. Taiwan is not a big country, and there is no excuse for lazy fixations on Kinmen.
Sasha B. Chhabra is a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
Chile has elected a new government that has the opportunity to take a fresh look at some key aspects of foreign economic policy, mainly a greater focus on Asia, including Taiwan. Still, in the great scheme of things, Chile is a small nation in Latin America, compared with giants such as Brazil and Mexico, or other major markets such as Colombia and Argentina. So why should Taiwan pay much attention to the new administration? Because the victory of Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast, a right-of-center politician, can be seen as confirming that the continent is undergoing one of its periodic political shifts,
Taiwan’s long-term care system has fallen into a structural paradox. Staffing shortages have led to a situation in which almost 20 percent of the about 110,000 beds in the care system are vacant, but new patient admissions remain closed. Although the government’s “Long-term Care 3.0” program has increased subsidies and sought to integrate medical and elderly care systems, strict staff-to-patient ratios, a narrow labor pipeline and rising inflation-driven costs have left many small to medium-sized care centers struggling. With nearly 20,000 beds forced to remain empty as a consequence, the issue is not isolated management failures, but a far more
RSS