Taiwan belongs to Taiwanese
Chen Ching-Chih

Taiwan does belong to Taiwanese in spite of China’s repeated claim.

One of the most frequently heard Chinese arguments is that “Taiwan has belonged to China since antiquity.” Such and such a territory has always belonged to China is probably the most commonly used rationale of the Chinese territorial claim. The Chinese are plainly deceiving themselves with such a ridiculous claim.

A decade ago, a retired colleague of mine served as a visiting professor at a university in Manchuria, the Northeast as Chinese call it. The American professor and his wife enjoyed entertaining his graduate students at their apartment. One night, the professor led a discussion centering on Manchurian history and culture. One of the students argued that “Northeast has belonged to China since ancient times,” and many of his fellow students chimed in. Having strived to teach in classroom his Chinese students how to think rather than what to think, the American professor, who was also well read in Chinese history, asked the students to explain why then Manchuria has lied outside of the famed Great Wall that was constructed and reconstructed to defend China from the nomadic barbarians. All the Chinese at the party were speechless. For long standard answers to important historical issues have been drilled by Chinese education authorities into the minds of Chinese students to such an extent that the Chinese have come to accept them for granted.

In addition to Manchuria, the Chinese of course have also claimed that Tibet, Eastern Turkistan (Sinkiang), Inner Mongolia as well as Taiwan have always belonged to China. The fact is none of them belonged to China prior to 1644 when the Chinese Ming Dynasty came to an end. It was the Manchu army that broke through the Great Wall to conquer Ming China and then militarily incorporated in the following decades surrounding territories including Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet. As a result of the Manchu-led Empire’s expansion, the island of Taiwan was also bought within the fold of the new empire in 1683. Partly due to challenges coming from the expanding West, the Manchu Ching Empire, not unlike the Ottoman Empire to the west, began to disintegrate from the mid-nineteenth-century on and ultimately broke up in early 20th century. Defeated militarily, the Empire, for example, lost Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842, lost Outer Manchuria north of the Amur to Czarist Russia in 1858-60, and Taiwan was ceded to Imperial Japan in 1895. Ultimately when the Manchu Ching Dynasty fell in 1912, the bulk of what was left of the Manchu empire became a republic while both Outer Mongolia and Tibet declared independence. With the protection of the Soviet Union, Mongolia has remained independent. Unfortunately, deprived of the necessary patronage after the British withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent when India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, Tibet was ultimately annexed militarily in the 1950’s by the People’s Republic of China that was established in 1949.

In the case of Taiwan, while Japan still possessed Taiwan Mao Zedong made known to the international community through Canadian journalist Edgar Snow, who published his Red Star over China in 1935 after having interviewing Mao and other Chinese Communist leaders, that Taiwan, like Korea, should eventually become independent of the Japanese colonial rule. Other Chinese leaders such as Tai Chi-tao of the KMT had expressed the same view earlier. Clearly, the Chinese were too preoccupied with China’s own problems, particularly Japan’s territorial ambition and expansion in China, to do more than just expressing their wish to see the eventual break-up of Japan’s colonial empire. When the end of the Japanese empire did come, it was chiefly due to the military might of the United States. Japan renounced her sovereignty over Taiwan as well as other overseas territories after its military defeat in the summer of 1945. The renouncement of sovereignty over Taiwan was officially reaffirmed in the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty that Japan signed with the US and 34 other countries. Without specifying a recipient country, the Treaty can only be and should be interpreted as leaving sovereignty over Taiwan to the people of Taiwan.

Repeatedly claiming, particularly since the 1970s, that there is only one China and that Taiwan is its inalienable “sacred territory,” the government of the People’s Republic of China, with its rising power, economic, political as well as military, has been able to compel increasing number of countries to acknowledge, if not accept, its claim. To demonstrate its determination to annex Taiwan, the Chinese National People’s Congress even passed unanimously on March 14, 2005 the so-called “Anti-secession Law” authorizing the use of “non-peaceful means” to annex Taiwan if Taiwan should strive to become fully independent. The fact is Taiwan has been fully independent of the People’s Republic of China since 1949.

Regarding China’s so-called “sacred territory,” one should take note of the fact that the Chinese have recently accepted Russian sovereignty over what most Chinese had for long dreamed of recovering its hundreds of thousands of square miles of “sacred territory” stolen by Czarist Russia in mid-19th-century as a result of the treaties of Argun (1858) and Peking (1860). Clearly capable of being pragmatic and flexible when confronting a more powerful neighbor, People’s Republic of China has finally come to settle territorial disputes peacefully with Russia. It is time that China also works to settle disputes with Taiwan peacefully rather than repeatedly threatening to use force against Taiwan. China’s belligerency toward Taiwan threatening peace and stability in East Asia has compelled Japan to join with the US in insisting a peacefully settlement of disputes across the Taiwan Strait. It will be to the benefit of China as well as to other countries concerned if and when China respects human rights, civilized international practices and the wishes of the Taiwanese to be masters of their own destiny. With peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese government can then devote fully its efforts to China’s continuing economic development and to the care of its people’s welfare.