July 17 to July 23
On March 23, 1996, a blast ripped through the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters. The bomb contained nerve gas, killing everything within a one-kilometer radius. The Ministry of National Defense was also hit. The nation’s broadcasting systems and telecommunications then went down, with the Chinese Communist Party hijacking the television channels to announce the People’s Liberation Army’s arrival in response to “political chaos due to [Taiwan’s] direct [presidential] elections.”
Soldiers visited government leaders, forcing them at gunpoint to record videos telling the military and police not to resist. China’s five-star red flag was raised atop the presidential palace 15 minutes after the initial announcement. About 30 minutes later, massive numbers of paratroopers landed from more than 1,000 fighter planes, while tens of thousands of amphibious forces arrived from the south. The Chinese then boasted of their nuclear weapons while quickly taking out any remaining resistance.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Enemy forces continued coming in throughout the day, and by the next morning, both sides of the Taiwan Strait announced their unification.
This imaginary invasion, dubbed T-day (Taiwan’s Fall Day), merely occupies one chapter of Cheng Lang-ping’s (鄭浪平) book, T-Day: The Warning of Taiwan Strait War (一九 九 五閏八月), published in August 1994. The rest of the book is political analysis, which does not make for popular reading. However, the fact that it sold a record 300,000 (some figures put it as high as 500,000) copies within a year showed the unease among the Taiwanese population.
At time of publication, tensions between Taiwan and China were high as then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) embarked on an aggressive diplomatic campaign to raise Taiwan’s international stature. Just three days earlier, the National Assembly amended the constitution to allow direct presidential elections in 1996, angering China.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
MODERN DAY PROPHET?
When China launched six missiles into waters just about 150km away from Taiwan between July 21 and July 28, 1995, Cheng was lauded as a prophet. The situation continued to escalate as China conducted military exercises in the Taiwan Strait throughout the rest of the year.
“How did the predictions in Cheng’s book come true? Is it a coincidence, or is it foresight? Will things continue to develop as depicted in the book?” asked the author of a CommonWealth (天下雜誌) magazine editorial published in September 1995.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The editorial adds that “prediction books” often have the ability to affect public opinion, which may in turn affect the government’s actions. As a result, this may decrease the chances that the predictions come true — which is the true function of such books.
That did seem to be Cheng’s intention. “I want to warn all Taiwanese about the possibility of T-day. I hope that before it happens, we can face this historical crisis and change our fate,” he wrote.
Cheng’s proposed solution to the problem was for Taiwanese to unite and show that they will not back down from Chinese invasion while showing China that they have no intention of “dividing China’s territory.” Taiwan should also hold high-level talks with China and start cooperating economically, which would yield immediate benefits that would deter an invasion (this did eventually happen).
A curious article appeared in the Chinese Christian Tribune in October of 1995.
“Cheng Lang-ping says God may use the hand of the Chinese Communist Party to punish Taiwan.” The article is unavailable, but Cheng does mention this Christian prophecy in his book. He writes that several Christian groups, especially overseas ones, had predicted that Taiwan would fall to the Communists in 1995, leading to much panic among Taiwan’s Christian communities.
While Cheng says he does “not entirely support their predictions and deduction methods,” he believes in the Christian groups’ “sixth sense and feelings of unease before a huge historical moment.”
Cheng bolsters his claim by the fact that the eighth month of the lunar calendar occurs twice in 1995, which has been linked to significant historic change in Chinese history.
It is unclear why he felt compelled to use supernatural elements to bolster his fact-based political arguments.
Historian and journalist Hsu Tsung-mao (徐宗懋) mentions in his book, 20th Century Taiwan: Democracy (20世紀台灣:民主篇) that while Cheng’s book was not the reason for the tide of emigration from Taiwan in 1995, it was certainly a trigger that further demoralized the people.
“It shows that despite Taiwan’s economic and political miracle, in the face of Chinese pressure and due to their fear of war, Taiwanese are sensitive and vulnerable to any slight disturbance.”
‘BAFFLING BESTSELLER’
An Apple Daily article states that Cheng made a lot of money off T-Day. The book’s publisher, Business Weekly, cites it as singlehandedly rejuvenating the floundering business during its 500th edition celebration in 2009.
Cheng later emigrated to Canada and wrote several more books. In an Epoch Times (大紀元) interview from 2004, Cheng announced that Taiwanese independence proponents will dominate the Legislative Yuan by 2005 and China would launch its invasion in 2007. The reporter was skeptical about the claim, calling Cheng an alarmist.
T-Day is now out of print. It was discussed during a 2004 Public Television Service episode featuring “baffling bestsellers” (莫名其妙暢銷書). Host Kevin Tsai (蔡康永) asked writer Pu Ta-chung (卜大中) about the book’s popularity.
“Looking at this book today, do you see it as an absurdity and question why you spent money on it?” Tsai asked.
Pu proceeded to trash the book, maintaining that Cheng was not an expert in the field and that the book’s success was built upon public paranoia and pure luck.
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
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