Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) has said that while the US was Taiwan’s benefactor, China is family.
That statement is not only logically flawed, but a serious misjudgement of Taiwan’s geopolitical reality. As Chinese military aircraft continue to intrude on Taiwanese airspace and threats against the nation continue, this kind of emotionally manipulative rhetoric blurring the line between friend and foe only serves to sap the public’s will to defend itself.
The distinction between “China” and “family” must be clarified. It is true that many people in Taiwan have relatives across the Strait, but that is a matter of personal familial ties.
At the national level, the People’s Republic of China regime has never abandoned its goal of annexing Taiwan — that makes it a foreign hostile force. When the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aim missiles at Taiwan, they do not regard the nation as family — they stand as enemies of the Republic of China, a nation still embroiled in national and historical grievances.
History has shown that when Chinese turn on one another, the brutality of their methods and their disregard for human life often know no limits. To call a neighbor that is seeking to destroy your nation’s democratic system “family” is not an act of tolerance, but of folly.
As for the claim that the US is a “benefactor,” Cheng even further distorted the truth. It is true that the US did assist former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in resisting the CCP and acted as an ally in protecting Taiwan from being “liberated.” It has betrayed Taiwan in the past.
More important to remember is that the US and Taiwan were once “benefactors” of China’s economic takeoff. Taiwanese businesses poured into China and the US helped usher it into the World Trade Organization, paving the way for former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) policy of “reform and opening up,” and economic prosperity. However, the CCP has responded with nothing but ingratitude — its military expansion undermines the geopolitical balance and threatens the very benefactors that contributed to its rise.
The core logic is that bolstering Taiwan’s defense resilience is by no means an act of provocation, but a matter of self-preservation, preventing annexation by a hostile state. The KMT often pressures the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to abandon the idea of Taiwanese independence, yet in reality, the Resolution on Taiwan’s Future — a declaration adopted by the DPP’s national convention in 1999 — clearly states that Taiwan’s future is to be decided by its 23 million people.
The true threat of war does not stem from discourse on Taiwanese independence, but from the CCP’s obsessive fixation on unification. If China were to abandon its goal of unifying with Taiwan, would the nation need to seek independence? And if the KMT were to abandon its goal of unifying with China, would it need to remain entangled with the CCP?
Taiwanese originally bore no inherent enmity toward China. It was the KMT that brought such hatred to this land following the Chinese Civil War.
Today, we face a dishonest neighbor — one that treats even its own people as cannon fodder. Taiwan can secure its survival only by clearly recognizing the reality of who is an enemy and who is a friend, and bolstering its national defense to deter the CCP’s delusional ambitions.
We must not allow “united front” logic to be wrapped in sentimental language, and Taiwan’s fate must never be entrusted to a neighbor’s supposed “ethnic goodwill.”
Shih Wen-yi is a former deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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