DOES TAIWAN REALLY BELONG TO CHINA?

Taiwanese People To China: Stay Out, Stay Away, Leave Us Alone!!!!

“Oh, you can’t say that, Mrs. Gruber!  You will disappear!” said Dorcas in her broken English.  This writer & hubby were teaching English in Taiwan in the 1970s, at a girls’ college established by British nuns.  The entire population was brutally ruled by the dictator Chiang Kai Shek who arrived in 1949 and declared martial law.  During our time there, the population consisted of about 90% Taiwanese people and 10% Chinese, virtually all being Chiang’s soldiers & families who had escaped from China as Mao’s Communist thugs took over.

Freedom of Speech?  Oh, please, what a quaint American notion!  By the time we arrived, generations of Taiwanese had learned that even mentioning the government or the dictator’s name could get you “disappeared.”  Loved ones of the “disappeareds” never knew if they were dead or incarcerated in the political prison offshore.  There was no “right to a lawyer” and no “due process.”  The masses had no rights and “the law” was whatever the Ruling Elite, (that is, Chiang and his lieutenants) said it was.

As Americans, we knew that we would not be “disappeared” for speaking freely.  At that time, the United States had diplomatic relations with the government of Taiwan, Republic of China.  [The Carter Administration canceled diplomatic relations January 1, 1979.]  The worst the dictatorship would do, could do to us, would be to deport us back to America.  Our US Passports protected us from imprisonment or execution.

In 1989, Taiwan became a democracy.  Both their economy and democracy are thriving now, and the Taiwanese don’t want to be taken over by Communist China.  They don’t want to live under the oppression of Communism.

BRIEF HISTORY OF TAIWAN

The Chinese Communist Party has long maintained that the Taiwanese people are really Chinese people and that Taiwan really belongs to China.  Well, that depends upon how one looks at it.  Should the American colonies have been forever ruled by England even though Americans wanted to govern themselves?  At the time of the American Revolution there were much, much closer ties between Americans and Englishmen than there is today between Taiwanese and Chinese. 

Anthropologists believe humans have lived on the Island of Taiwan for tens of thousands of years.  By 3000 BC they had established an agrarian culture.  DNA shows that these first inhabitants share the same ancestors as the original Hawaiians and other cultures around the South Pacific.  They spoke an early form of Austronesian languages.

There were two waves of migrants from the Chinese Empire’s southeastern provinces in the 1600s: 1) the ethnic Holko who still speak the Hokkien language and 2) the Hakka people who still maintain their distinct identity and language in today’s Taiwan.

During this period the Island of Taiwan was nominally part of the Chinese Empire. Taiwan & China are separated by 110 miles of ocean called the Strait of Taiwan.  The Chinese government had little actual control over Taiwan and its people due to the distance and the poor travel & communication conditions of the day.  The Taiwanese were free to make their own decisions and run their own affairs.

CHINESE EMPERORS LONG DISDAINED TAIWAN 

The Chinese government long considered Taiwan useless, referring to it as a place where “flowers don’t bloom and birds don’t shit.”  In reality, Taiwan is a beautiful land, covered with forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, flowers, many species of birds and numerous unique animals, including the Mei Hua Lu deer.  As a Portuguese ship approached the island around 1542-44, the sailors called out “Ilha Formosa,” which means “beautiful island.”

After defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, Empress Dowager Cixi quickly ceded Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895 as spoils of war.  Japan occupied Taiwan until their own defeat in WWII (1945), at which time China’s nationalist government took nominal control of the island.  Following defeat by Mao’s Red Army, the president of the nationalist government, Chiang Kai-shek, brought what was left of his army to Taiwan in 1949 and declared martial law. 

Chiang’s soldiers slaughtered 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese, most of which were deemed “too educated.”  They assassinated the only Harvard-educated man, along with doctors, professors, lawyers, newspaper editors, etc.  This was done to terrorize and subdue the Taiwanese people.

Chiang Kai Shek passed away in 1975 and his son took over as ruler.  His son passed away in 1988.  By that time the Taiwanese people were eager to rule themselves and the dictatorship collapsed.  Taiwan became a democracy in 1989.  Both their economy and democracy are now thriving, and the Taiwanese people don’t want to live under the oppression of Communism.