Taiwan belongs to Taiwanese (An article submitted by Prof. Ching-chih Chen to Taipei Times in June, 2005)

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 for the Chinese territorial claim. The Chinese are plainly deceiving themselves whenever they make 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 the 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 asserted that “The Northeast has belonged to China since ancient times,” and all his fellow students present enthusiastically supported the argument. Having strived to teach his Chinese students how to think rather than what to think, the American professor, who was also well read on Chinese history, asked his students to explain why then Manchuria lies outside of the famed Great Wall that was constructed and reconstructed since the third century B.C. to defend China from the nomadic “barbarians.” All the Chinese at the party were speechless. For long standard answers to important historical and cultural issues have been drilled by Chinese education and propaganda authorities into the minds and hearts of the Chinese to such an extent that the Chinese have come to accept them without questions.

In addition to Manchuria, the Chinese of course have also claimed that Tibet, Eastern Turkistan (Sinkiang), 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 20^th century. Defeated militarily, the Empire, for example, lost Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842, Outer Manchuria north of the Amur to Czarist Russia in 1858-60, and Taiwan 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, Outer Mongolia has remained independent. Unfortunately, deprived of the essential British support and patronage after the British withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent when India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, Tibet was militarily annexed in the 1950’s by the People’s Republic of China that was established in 1949.

In the case of Taiwan, it is crystal clear that Taiwan did not belong to China since the ancient times. It was not even the first country to have political control over part, if not the entirety of the island. The Dutch established the first government over western portion of Taiwan in 1624. In 1662, however, the Dutch were expelled from Taiwan by the military force of pirate-general Cheng Chen-kung, better known to the Westerners as Koxinga, who established a kingdom in Taiwan. The Chen’s naval activities against southeast coast of the newly-established Manchu Ching Empire in China contributed to their ultimate destruction in 1683. To prevent Taiwan from ever becoming an anti-Manchu base again, the Manchu court decided to bring Taiwan under its control. For the next two centuries, the Manchu rule over Taiwan was a rather loose and ineffective one. Even so, Manchu Ching had to cede the island to Japan as a result of suffering a humiliating military defeat in the hands of the then modernized Japan in 1895. While Japan still possessed Taiwan Mao Zedong made known to the international community through American journalist Edgar Snow, who published his Red Star over China in 1937 after having interviewed 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 legally 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 must 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 unanimously passed 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-19^th-century as a result of the treaties of Aigun (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 its territorial disputes by peaceful means with Russia. It is time that China also works to settle peacefully disputes with Taiwan rather than repeatedly threatening to use force against Taiwan. China’s belligerency toward Taiwan threatens peace and stability in East Asia and has consequently 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 when China respects human rights, well-established international practices and the wishes of the freedom-loving Taiwanese to be masters of their own destiny. When peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is assured, the Chinese government can then devote its full efforts to China’s continuing economic development and to the care of its people’s well-being.