China Should Never be Allowed to Get Taiwan
Based on the long and intricate history of the small island state of the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, as well as Formosa, and the claim by the much larger People’s Republic of China that the former has always been an integral part of the latter, is akin to the “scientific” assertion that cannibalism is the apotheosis of gastronomic pleasure. Indeed, when the first Spanish adventurers around the 1620s, and subsequently the staff of the Dutch East India Company in 1624, set foot on the shores of this island, they found not even a single proof that the Ming Dynasty ever had any presence – administrative or military – there.
The population consisted overwhelmingly of aboriginal tribes who were not Hahn Chinese and spoke distinctly different languages. A few Chinese from the mainland settled on the shores, but the rest were mostly shuttling across the mainland and the island as traders of goods. Naming the island Ilha Formosa (the Beautiful Island), the Dutch ruled it for thirty eight years. Their rule ended when the successor Qing/Manchu dynasty fought the opposition Koxinga (Cheng Cheng-kung) regime that previously escaped to Formosa and ruled over the southwestern corner of the island. That the Qing emperor’s objective wasn’t the occupation of Formosa but the defeat of the hostile Koxinga forces, was made plain in 1683 by Emperor Kangxi thus: “Taiwan is outside our empire and of no great consequence for us.” To further emphasize imperial China’s disinterest in the island, the emperor even requested the Dutch Company to return to Formosa.
For the next two hundred plus years, the Qing/Manchu emperors controlled the western and northern coastal areas of the island, in which “every three years an uprising, every five years a rebellion” occurred by the indigenous islanders against the Hahn occupiers. Yet, even then, the island wasn’t part of the Chinese Empire but was treated as a colonial territory, which was administered by the bureaucrats of the Fukien province. Only in 1885, was the island designated as an independent province of the Qing Empire.
Then, as a result of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895, the moribund Chinese Empire ceded Taiwan under the Shimonoseki Treaty to Japan in perpetuity. Japanese rule was uncontested until the Cairo Conference in 1943, when Chiang Kai-shek claimed that “Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadoras (the Penghu Islands), shall be restored to the Republic of China.” Following Japan’s surrender in August 1945, Taiwan was designated as “occupied by the Republic of China on behalf of the Allied Forces.” Finally, in the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951-1952, Taiwan was not recognized as a part of either the Republic of China or the People’s Republic of China.
With the Republic of China’s relocation to the island in 1949, the armed forces of Chiang Kai-shek soundly defeated Mao Zedong’s guerilla army in the Battle of Guningtou on Kinmen, in the northwestern coast of Taiwan. Since that time, the Republic of China has progressed from the Chiang Kai-shek led Kuomintang’s autocracy to being a full-fledged democracy, with vibrant political, economic, cultural and social lives – in a totally separate existence from the People’s Republic of China. The latter, on the other hand, has regressed through several tyrants to the political dystopia of the arrested developments of the past triumphantly designated as the glorious future.
Clearly, the present-day People’s Republic of China is built on the quicksand of the barefaced lies of Confucianism’s elusive harmony with the even more mendacious ideological hotchpotch of Marxism, Maoism as well as Xideification, concocted by Xi Jinping, the pseudo-Communist Messiah de-jour of the anti-Western tyrannical cabal. His Global Civilization Initiative of March 15, 2023, coming on the heels of the Global Development Initiative in 2021, as well as the Global Security Initiative in 2022, are nothing but the plagiarization of the failed Leninist-Stalinist worldview with Chinese characteristics. What Xideification really means is that the rest of the world, including the United States of America, Europe, Africa and Asia must yield to ubiquitous Chinese supremacy in the guise of its artificial Communism cum Socialism.
Characterized as “Xivilization” by the fawning Chinese media, President XI Jinping’s “Big Red Book” is sold to the rest of the world as the path to the “equality of civilizations” and to the creation of a “peaceful world.” Yet, as always, truth and lies are merged in Chinese culture into a linguistically deceptive bamboozle scam. In reality, President Xi Jinping and his like minded acolytes incessantly extol the military might of the People’s Republic of China and its People’s Liberation Army’s readiness to fight and physically eliminate the evil United States of America and anybody that dares to lift even a finger against the former’s global imperialist designs. Movies about the vastly superior Chinese military and the American soldiers who even lack the guts of a louse are being produced on assembly lines throughout mainland China. Claims to Beijing’s right to own almost all of the South China Sea and beyond, with the enthusiastic support of all “peace loving nations,” are again a bunch of lies that contradict reality. A most recent movie, “Born to Fly,” tells the story of self-sacrifice of patriotic as well as highly educated young Chinese pilots who risk their lives to fight against an unnamed foreign power whose pilots, however, converse in audibly American-accented English.
Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping’s heavenly China is being destroyed by his megalomaniac craziness. Politically, the Communist Party under his leadership has failed to centralize the country. On the other hand, decentralization has been an economic and social disaster. The People’s Republic of China is drowning in both regional and national debt. The Belt and Road Initiative has lost its momentum. Internationally, the BRICS is dying an unceremonious death. Open hostilities with all Asian states are giving a lie to Beijing’s geopolitical doctrines. Equally bogus is President Xi Jinping’s newfound “eternal friendship” with the Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. In conclusion, President Xi Jinping’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” is dead on arrival.
Considering all these realities, the defense of the Republic of China is mandatory. Militarily and geographically, Beijing is not in the position to defeat and occupy the island. And it should never be allowed to get in the position to do so. It appears that in the foreseeable future President Xi’s China is ripe for another humiliation, for the Communist leadership to come to its senses.
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