More resolutely than ever, Beijing is pursuing the claim of using force to bring “breakaway” Taiwan back into the bosom of China if necessary. It ignores the fact that it has never been an integral part of China.
The government in Beijing likes to present its attitude towards Taiwan as the final solution to its struggle against colonialism, as the end of China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers. But the opposite is the case. Today, as the People’s Republic of China holds naval firing exercises outside the island’s main ports and airports, it is Taiwan that is under siege.
One can think of Taiwan as China’s Ireland. Even the chronologies are similar. In the late 17th century, just a few decades after Oliver Cromwell’s brutal suppression of the Irish Catholic Confederation, China’s Qing Empire invaded Taiwan and brought part of the country under its colonial rule for the first time. Even after partial annexation in 1684, the Qing viewed the island as a dangerous frontier, best known for its unpredictable “native people” and deadly diseases.
No further interest
Some parts of the island were never conquered; Areas in the highlands with difficult terrain were left alone as long as the peace in the lowlands was not disturbed from there. The Qing viewed these areas much like British India viewed its north-west frontier: as places of savagery that needed stewardship and occasional punitive expeditions.
Taiwan did not formally become a separate province of the Qing Empire until 1887, two years after the end of a war with France in which control of the island’s ports had become strategic. The new provincial administration claimed to bring the benefits of civilization from the mainland: railroads, medicines, and taxes. Reactions from locals were mixed.
Xi Jinping learned history from the simplistic nationalist books of his youth: Like Chiang Kai-shek, he is a colonialist.
The island remained under Qing control for only eight years before being conquered by Japan after the humiliating end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 for Beijing. The treaty, signed in the port city of Shimonoseki, granted Japan control of Taiwan “permanently and under full sovereignty.” Taiwan became a colony again, but this time under a different master.
There was some resistance on the island, but it was quickly nipped in the bud. And again railroads, drugs and taxes were introduced. Within a few years, people in mainland China had forgotten about Taiwan. There were no efforts to bring the country back under mainland control. Even the nationalist revolutionary Sun Yat-sen ignored the island’s plight. He used the island as a revolutionary base during his campaign to overthrow the Qing Empire, but did nothing to support anti-Japanese activities. For the nationalists, Taiwan was lost – and that was it.
The loss was enshrined in the country’s new constitution after the nationalist revolution of 1911-12. Article 3 simply said: “The territory of the Chinese Republic consists of 22 provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia and Tibet.” The selection of the 22 provinces specifically excluded the former province of Taiwan. This mainland-only view of Chinese territory was found on all maps of the country in the 1920s and 1930s. Taiwan was not considered part of China.
A nationality of their own
The communist movement also shared this view. At its Sixth Congress in 1928, the Communist Party recognized “Taiwanese” as a separate nationality. In November 1938, the party plenum resolved “to establish an anti-Japanese united front between the Chinese and the Koreans, Taiwanese and other peoples,” implicitly making a distinction between Taiwanese and Chinese. Both the nationalists and the communists regarded the “Taiwanese” as a distinct “minzu” – which can mean both “nation” and “ethnic group”.
It wasn’t until the middle of World War II, when it looked like Japan was losing, that rival Chinese leaders rediscovered Taiwan. From mid-1942, the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) under Chiang Kai-shek made great efforts to define Taiwan as real China and to extend China’s “national body” to the island. This was done in large part in the belief that Taiwan was vital to the country’s defense.
A few months after Japan’s surrender, a nervous group of Chinese officials arrived on the island and set about establishing a new administration. However, there were many people in Taiwan who did not want to be incorporated into the ROC. Some had benefited from the Japanese occupation, others resented the corruption of the Chinese government, and others were simply hostile to the newcomers from the mainland. The protests finally erupted on February 28, 1947 and were met with extreme violence. By the end of March, at least 5,000 Taiwanese (some say as many as 20,000) had been killed by mainland forces.
This colonial attitude toward Taiwan is evident in Chiang Kai-shek’s 1947 book China’s Destiny. In it he writes that «Formosa [Taiwan]the pescadores [die Inseln westlich von Taiwan]the four northeastern provinces [die Mandschurei]Inner and Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang [Xinjiang] and Tibet are each a fortress (or strategic area) essential to the nation’s defense and security». For Chiang, these outlying areas must be annexed to China to protect the heartland of the “motherland” from foreign attacks.
Divided to this day
Ironically, Taiwan became a safe haven for Chiang, shielding him not from foreign attack but from communist control of the motherland. In 1949, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang government fled to the island. Originally this was only intended to be a temporary retreat, a place where they could reposition themselves to reclaim the mainland. The Kuomintang continued to present itself to the world as the legitimate government of the ROC, occupying China’s seat at the United Nations until 1971.
This fiction obscured the basic fact that Taiwan was governed as part of the mainland for only four years, from October 1945 to late 1949. However, during this period the Kuomintang brought de facto another colonial administration to the island. The party pretended to be a Chinese government that governed the entire country, including the mainland. With the power of the military dictatorship, it imposed Mandarin over the local Hokkien and Hakka languages, as well as the languages of the hill tribes. Under the banner of Chinese nationalism, the Kuomintang cemented mainland norms and sought to establish a unified “Chinese” identity.
The legacy of these conditions and the resistance to them continue to divide politics in Taiwan to this day. The ranks of the Kuomintang are still largely composed of the descendants of those who came to the island with Chiang Kai-shek. The current ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party, represents the section of the population opposed to mainland control. For example, the family of Taiwan’s current president, Tsai Ing-wen, is descended from the Hakka. As in Ireland today, relations with the “mainland” divide the country’s politics. The very use of this term causes a stir in Taiwan, as it does in Ireland.
The jewel in the proletarian crown
In the 77 years that have passed since Taiwan was reintegrated into the ROC, the political and demographic situation has changed radically. Few perpetual hawks believe that the “Republic of China” will ever retake mainland China and “reunite” the motherland under non-Communist control. The island is a de facto independent state, although it is not formally recognized by any other country. If you visit the British Representative Office in Taipei, you will find that it has exactly the same tableware as all British embassies in the world, except that the royal coat of arms is missing from the plates. Britain, like everyone else, treats Taiwan as an independent government, but will not disclose this.
Taiwan’s non-existence has not prevented the country’s companies from exporting, and the population enjoys a standard of living that is equal to that of the US and well above that of mainland China. The country’s passports (issued in Chinese in the name of “Republic of China” but in English read “Taiwan”) grant visa-free access to 145 countries, almost twice as many as the Chinese passport. However, turning this de facto independence into a constitutional reality would be grounds for war in Beijing’s eyes.
Most Taiwanese enjoy the status quo across the Taiwan Straits. The People’s Republic of China is Taiwan’s main trading partner, many Taiwanese are related to families living across the straits, and in normal times the island benefits from the relatively free movement of people and trade across the strait. Apart from a few fanatics, no one in Taiwan wants war with mainland China, but neither does anyone want to be “reunited” with an authoritarian state that seems politically on the move from “socialism with Chinese traits” to “National Socialism with Chinese traits.”
Xi Jinping learned history from the simplistic nationalist books of his youth: Like Chiang Kai-shek, he is a colonialist. As the people of Tibet and Xinjiang can attest, he has a “steamroller” view of national unity. He commands homogeneity in the name of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” And he will not rest until he has “returned” to the motherland every rock and reef in the South China Sea and every barren mountainside in the Himalayas. Taiwan would become the jewel in its proletarian crown.
Bill Hayton is an Associate Fellow on Chatham House’s Asia Pacific program and a journalist with BBC World News. The books he penned are: «Vietnam: Rising Dragon» (2010), «The South China Sea. The Struggle for Power in Asia (2014) and The Invention of China (2020). The reprinted article appeared on August 5, 2022 in the British online magazine “Unherd”. – Translated from the English by Andreas Breitenstein.