OPINION:
In the run-up to the meeting this week in Beijing between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping, the Chinese side has been increasing the volume of its message that Taiwan has “always belonged to China.”
In the view of the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan’s “return” is an integral part of the postwar international order.
Never mind that China, under Mr. Xi, has been trying to undermine the liberal postwar international order by setting up alternative organizations and schemes detrimental to freedom and democracy. China’s own repression of Tibet, East Turkestan and Hong Kong is a vivid example.
Yet the “return to China” is the biggest misnomer. Taiwan has never been part of the PRC. From 1895 to 1945, the island was a Japanese colony. Many in Taiwan view the Japanese period as benign and “strict but fair,” certainly in comparison with the corrupt and repressive Chinese Nationalist rule of Chiang Kai-shek.
Chiang imposed martial law on the island until 1987, after which the Taiwanese gained the freedom and democracy they enjoy today.
Yes, before the Japanese period, Taiwan was very briefly a “province of China,” but that lasted only eight years — an inconvenient truth for Beijing today.
Before that time, as I write in “Taiwan: The facts of history versus Beijing’s myths” for the Council on Geostrategy, “From 1683 until 1887, the island was formally administered as part of the province of Fukien, but in reality it was a wild and open frontier. More than 100 armed revolts took place during that period, prompting the observation that there was ‘an uprising every three years and a revolution every five years.’ The inhabitants viewed the Qing Dynasty as very much a foreign colonial regime and in no way saw themselves as ‘part of China.’”
During roughly the same period, Britain ruled India as a colony. Does one therefore argue that India “should be returned to Britain? Of course not.
Yet from before 1683, there is even more evidence that Mr. Xi Jinping’s claim that “Taiwan has always been part of China since ancient times,” often adding that this has been the case since the Ming and Qing dynasties, does not hold water.
“Before 1624, Taiwan was inhabited by an indigenous population of headhunting Malay-Austronesians, who ferociously fought each other, but also kept outsiders at bay,” I write. “Occasionally a Chinese expedition passed by the island, such as during the Sui Dynasty (605 and 607 C.E.), but there was no official Chinese presence.
“When the Dutch [East India Co.] arrived in Anping (present-day Tainan) in 1624 to establish a trading post, they found no evidence of any Chinese officialdom in Taiwan, let alone any administrative control. It was thus certainly not part of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
In 1623, emissaries of Tianqi, then the Ming Dynasty emperor, even told the Dutch (who were trying to take Macao from the Portuguese as they sought a port through which to trade with China) to go “beyond our territory.” They did not object when the Dutch went to Formosa, where they built Fort Zeelandia and established administrative control as part of the Dutch East Indies Co., which lasted until 1662. It certainly was not “part of China” during those days.
In 1662, Dutch rule ended when Cheng Ch’eng-kung, Ming Dynasty adherent and warlord, was driven from the mainland by the advancing Manchu armies, took refuge on the island and established the short-lived independent Kingdom of Tungning. Yet the Ming Dynasty itself was long gone by then, and the Cheng family’s rule ended in 1683, when Koxinga’s grandson was defeated by the Manchu navy at the Battle of the Pescadores.
In 1683, the new Manchu emperor was initially not interested in the island at all. His main goal was to defeat the last remnants of the Ming Dynasty. Emperor Kangxi even stated: “Taiwan is outside our empire and of no great consequence.” He offered to let the Dutch buy it back.
There is thus no historical basis for the Chinese claims to Taiwan.
The main reason the U.S. and other friendly countries are pushing back strongly against Mr. Xi’s claims is that the Taiwanese fought hard to achieve democracy. Under the United Nations Charter, they have the right to determine their own future.
The only truly peaceful resolution will be achieved if China, the U.S. and other countries accept Taiwan as a fully free, equal and democratic member of the international community.
• Gerrit van der Wees is a former Dutch diplomat who teaches the history of Taiwan and U.S. relations with East Asia at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
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