Inside China: ‘Fierce of mien but faint of heart’

China’s official communist newspaper, the People’s Daily, on Tuesday joined a heated debate in Taiwan over the fact that fewer and fewer people in democratic Taiwan want to be regarded as “Chinese.”

In a story headlined “Last year’s poll indicates only 4 percent of people in Taiwan think of themselves as Chinese,” the newspaper warned readers that a growing sentiment of separatism in Taiwan is poisoning people and the chief culprit is Taiwan’s new textbooks, which were revised under previous pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party administrations.

Last week, Taiwan’s former premier and retired Gen. Hau Pei-tsun, who belongs to the mainland-friendly incumbent Kuomintang party, ignited a fierce debate in Taiwan after publishing an op-ed in the Chinese-language United Daily News in which he criticized Taiwan’s current history textbooks as “too Taiwan-centric.”

Mr. Hau said a history textbook that his granddaughter is using “endangers the founding spirit of the Republic of China and carries a strong ideological tilt toward ‘one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait,’ ” which is a Democratic Progressive Party platform that denies Taiwan is part of China and says Taiwanese are not Chinese.

China considers Taiwan a “sacrosanct island of the motherland” subject to be taken over by force if necessary.

• Miles Yu’s column appears Thursdays. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.