The Hou/Ko/(Ma) embroilment

The photo suits the post and you already know why

Two days ago, Donovan Smith wrote a fantastic column on Ma Ying-jeou's entrée into the weird "will they or won't they" situation between the KMT's Hou You-yih and the TPP's personality cult leader, Ko Wen-je. 

I'd actually missed this when it happened; I've been pulling odd hours at my many workplaces, because I've had a few career things (not bad things, as it turns out) shift in recent weeks. So, I've been a bad blogger and bad Taiwan politics follower. 

In fact, I'd thought the possibility of cooperation between Hou and Ko had long passed. I am fairly sure the DPP doesn't think there will be a joint Hou-Ko ticket, either. The two parties both keep dancing around the issue, and it sure seems like they've mostly wanted the attention the speculation is bringing -- as opposed to Lai's almost absurdly boring campaign -- more than they actually want to cooperate. Campaign ads have shown different deputies in the background for each, and it just didn't look very likely that one would subordinate himself to the other. 

Though, if I had to guess, I'd say Hou would be more willing to surrender to Ko than the other way around. He seems like that kind of person: not strong of character, certainly lacking an ethical compass, but generally willing to lie low and not say much. Not ruffle any feathers he doesn't need to (and even some he possibly does). Ko likes to...just sort of do what he wants, which may present a problem for cooperation and in the election generally.

That, however, is just my opinion.

As you might expect, both sides have put forth methods of determining who should lead the ticket that favor themselves. Ko's proposal makes it more likely that he'd get the presidential slot, Hou's obviously favors Hou. You can read more about it in Donovan's article; I don't need to repeat what he's already said. 

Then Ma Ying-jeou entered the fray, saying he supported "purely opinion based polling" to determine who might lead such a ticket. That was rightly described as a bombshell, because Ma is a KMT stalwart. Ko generally leads in the polls, not the KMT's own Hou. (Of course Ma would never come right out and say "I support Ko over Hou").

The KMT reaction to this has been...mixed.

Ma Ying-jeou's Enemy For Life Wang Jin-pyng -- a man I don't like, but I can admire that he doesn't lie supine for Ma -- has come out and said that he supports a joint ticket where Hou leads and Ko takes the vise presidential slot, but Hou, Ma and the KMT should "think twice" before using opinion polling to cantilever Ko to the top of the ticket. He cited the backlash in the south (where rural KMT supporters would probably go for Hou but not accept Ko), that it would split the KMT, and that KMT officials wouldn't necessarily know which authority figure to follow. And you know, KMT officials always need an authority figure to follow. 

Wang also pointed out that Ko is someone who does whatever he wants; he wouldn't necessarily accept sloppy seconds, but as a presidential nominee he wouldn't necessarily listen to others. (That's not an exact quote, it's an interpretation of comments he's made). 

On the other hand, Han Kuo-yu has expressed support for basically whatever Ma wants. My only surprise here is that what Han Kuo-yu thinks still matters. I kid -- a little. Yet, he does still have a support base.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu's response seems more ambivalent, but nobody really cares what Chu thinks, least of all the KMT. (Again, I'm joking...kinda. He actually does seem to have political chops, well-hidden behind an aggressively Milquetoast façade).  

Hou has said he "will not give up hope" in the face of such cooperation and he hopes the result will "meet everyone's expectations", which sounds like a very Hou, and very Taiwanese, thing to say. The two sides will talk tomorrow in a meeting that will be attended by Ma Ying-jeou, and take place at the (barf) Ma Ying-jeou Cultural and Educational Foundation. A place that sounds like my personal idea of hell...but anyway. 

Clearly, Ma is trying to force this union and seems to be willing to go to great lengths to do so. He's got his fingers all up in this thing.

I'm hardly an expert, but here you are reading this so please enjoy some wild speculation about why this might be. Why would a blue-from-birth KMTer like Ma pivot to Ko and get his weird bald minion to go along with it? 

First, I've said basically forever that KMT Chairman Eric Chu, along with Hou You-yih and honestly much of the KMT, are basically Ma Ying-jeou's puppets (傀儡). I'm not the only one who's said this, either. Friends have disagreed, pointing out that they come from different factions within the KMT. 

When it comes to Ma, however, I'm truly not sure that matters: he just wants to control everyone regardless of faction. Certainly Ma doesn't seem to like Hou very much, but beyond that I don't think being in different factions changes Ma's desire for continued influence. He'll control whomever he has to control to push through his pro-China, pro-unification agenda, no matter how unpopular it is with the public. Hou doesn't seem particularly able to push back, which is why the KMT campaign honestly feels like some sort of Ma-era zombie awakening -- part II of a particularly bad horror movie. 

Thus, the simple explanation would be that Ma wants two things: power for himself, and to defeat the DPP. Okay, three things: he's also a dirty unificationist.

It's been widely reported that Liou Chao-hsuan -- I don't think that's the romanization he prefers but let's go with it -- Ma's former premier, is the "driving force" behind the whole idea. I don't buy this for even a second: it reeks of Ma's dirty fingers. Liou is a feint. A ruse. A decoy. 

And if Ko on top is the ticket most likely to defeat the DPP, Ma might just decide he loves power more than he loves party loyalty.

Ma's own chances of having a say over national policy, and of Taiwan moving in a more pro-China direction, are better if the DPP loses by any means necessary. Quite possibly, he would have preferred to control Hou at the top. Sensing that might not be possible, he's just as willing to do Ko a favor, get him to the top, and thus be 'owed'. 

This is probably not the entire explanation, but I doubt it's entirely untrue, either. 

There is likely some factional infighting going on. There always is, with the KMT. (The DPP seems to have somewhat beaten back their own factional struggles, for now). Perhaps Ma thinks he can supercede all of the squabbling factions by using his power and influence to crown Ko, a man entirely outside such factional struggles. Certainly the deep blues who follow Ma don't care for the more 'local' Hou, and I doubt Hou cares much for them, either. 

I suspect that if this is the case, Ma doesn't know what he's getting into with Ko, a man who is happy to take the support given to him but never pay it back. 

You know, like he did with the Sunflower zeitgeist that helped him get elected in Taipei. 

Considering the way he's treated the Sunflowers since, it surprises me that he seems to be the 'youth candidate'. Quite literally, but why tho? He's not young and doesn't represent their interests. All he has to offer is that he's not from one of the stodgy older parties; being "not those other guys" with no clear notion of why he's better shouldn't be enough. 

Regardless, I am not entirely sure that Ko will feel obligated to submit to Ma even if Ma does propel him to the top of the ticket. I'm also not sure Ma understands that, because he doesn't seem to realize there are people he can't control. Certainly he wants to shove unification down the throats of a Taiwanese public that does not want it. 

                       


I'm sure Donovan will cover the factional angle in more depth; I'll leave him to it. It's not my area of expertise. 

I also can't help but think there's a China angle here. I know it's kind of lazy to take every little thing that happens in Taiwanese politics and say "yeah that's China's meddling", but sometimes it really is China's meddling! 

The biggest potential winners in a Ko-Hou ticket (as opposed to a Hou-Ko ticket) are Ko, Ma, and possibly Han Kuo-yu. Why Han? Because Wang Jin-pyng is probably right that the rural south isn't going to take kindly to such a ticket, and they'll need to bring out all the Han stans to win back that vote. That will help Han tidy up the reputation he marred a bit when he lost the 2020 election by such a humiliating margin.

You'd think Han's reputation would have been marred by the time he literally killed a guy well before losing an election, then losing the election he'd previously won, but whatever. Ma will certainly give his weird little minion some kind of treat for it. 

When I think of those three men, I think of Chinese backing. Do I even need to cite the notion that Ma is cooperating with the CCP? I mean, he doesn't try to hide it. If there's one thing Ma likely wants more than his own power and influence, it's for the CCP to get its tentacles into the brains of Taiwanese youth. 

It's been speculated quite a bit that Han Kuo-yu's weird (I'm sorry, that guy is weird, everything about him is weird, I will never stop saying this) return to power was due in great part to Chinese funding. I mean, is it even really 'speculated' anymore? Perhaps there was also a factional angle -- there always seems to be -- but more likely than not it came down mostly to a CCP-backed effort. They saw in him a pro-China, Trump-like dullard whom they'd barely have to control because he was already in bed with them.

As for Ko, it's been speculated that he's long since switched from green to light blue to (potentially) red. He was recently seen campaigning with New Party (and dirty unificationist) Chiu Yi, a man Ko once called "like a CCP nominee". Chiu Yi is almost too red for the KMT, but here he is actively supporting Ko, hosting "fan meetings", the works. 

If you think the support of one guy doesn't say much, I disagree. The support of this one particular guy says a lot. This is the dude who said that Taiwan independence activists deserve to be "beheaded"! Ko has also been seen associating with Terry Gou. You know, the Foxconn founder, rich asshole and presidential nominee nobody really cares about. Terry Gou, who is so relentlessly pro-China that it's almost comical. 

There's a lot more I could say here. There are still questions about Ko's comments regarding China ("we're all one family"), his family's investments in China, and his actions while attending events in China. He's even come out and said China wants him to run for president! 

If we take for granted that China is interfering in this election because they try to interfere in every Taiwanese election, and we note that the people (and one weird minion) at the forefront of this push for a Ko-topped ticket are all either suspected or outright known to be in China's pocket, then it's not a big leap to think this whole rigmarole is a China-backed push to get someone it can control in power. 

That Ma wants power too is almost secondary, in this case. He's happy to be the CCP's slimy bootlicker regardless. 

I'm not convinced these three options exist independently of each other. Ma wanting power and a defeat of Lai, factional struggles within the KMT and funding, disinformation and other election manhandling by China all seem to co-exist in every other election. Why not this one?

Potentially, the only difference regarding the 2024 election is that Ko has turned from a potential 'youth candidate' who could take the light blue/don't like Hou and light green/don't like Lai votes into a straight-up CCP agent, with known CCP agent Ma Ying-jeou at his back. And perhaps the incentives -- power, money, the usual -- from China are getting sweeter. 

A long ramble, from Harvard's decision to the earnest roots of bad opinions

I usually choose photos for metaphorical reasons -- I don't have a clear reason why I selected this one but I think it works. Draw your own conclusions.

Anyone reading this has surely heard by now that a popular summer language program that Harvard University held in China until recently is now being moved to Taiwan. The program director cited a chilly attitude from the Beijing host university as well as logistical factors -- for instance, separating the students into two dorms of quite different quality -- for the decision. 

The program offered not just language study but chances to travel around the country and learn about Chinese culture and history. Now, all of that will be happening in Taiwan, which means traveling around this country and learning about its own unique culture and history.

From the New York Times:

The program’s director, Jennifer L. Liu, told The Harvard Crimson that the move had been driven by a perceived lack of friendliness on the part of the Chinese host institution, the Beijing Language and Culture University. Harry J. Pierre, a Harvard spokesman, said, “The planned move of this program from Beijing to Taiwan has been considered for some time and reflects a wide array of operational factors.”

Other people contacted for comment said it was a purely logistical move and that Harvard was not looking to cut its ties in China. That could just be the opinion of one professor, or it could be a band-aid statement. But if it was truly just a logistical move, why say this?

“It is hoped that in the free academic atmosphere of National Taiwan University, we can lay a solid Mandarin foundation for the excellent students of Harvard,” the university said in a statement.

Frankly, however, I don't care what the actual reasons are for the switch. It doesn't really matter. This is going to be a fantastic chance for students interested in the 'Sinophone' world and studying Mandarin to be exposed to Taiwan. Perhaps this is one of the few times that having Mandarin as a main language in Taiwan is actually helpful for the country, rather than just more evidence of KMT-imported cultural and linguistic imperialism. 

This is a no-brainer, but I feel like it's worth spelling out: these sorts of positive experiences and interactions are the backbone of connections to the international community for Taiwan, and they also foster general goodwill among people who might go on to careers or positions of influence where being well-disposed towards Taiwan will be to Taiwan's benefit.

When one encounters something in a positive way and have good experiences with it, whatever values are transmitted or embedded in that experience (intentionally or not) are going to be more likely to influence that person. These can be toward a greater good, or they can be detrimental.

I'm going to go off-topic here to try and make a larger point: a good friend of mine described the negative end of this perfectly once, when discussing the more unfortunate side of how this works. 

Imagine you're this Western guy, you come to Taiwan and you meet a really wonderful woman. She's smart, beautiful, fun, cool -- and you even like her family. They're so welcoming and friendly. You date and maybe marry this woman. And she, along with her whole family, are these deep-blue KMT supporters. You don't speak much Mandarin (maybe you learn it, maybe not, most likely not all that well) so as far as you can tell, whatever they're saying about society must be right, because they're so great, and they're from here. They must know, they're Taiwanese! And they can be trusted because you know they're good people, right? And you don't really understand what TVBS is blathering on about in the background, or if you do you're so used to it that you don't register that they're about as reliable as Fox News. 

So then you go online, or to a social event, and you come across people discussing Taiwanese politics in English. Some are Westerners, some not. And they seem to just really hate all the people your wonderful wife and friendly in-laws like. Perhaps they're even saying KMT voters are terrible -- but they're literally your family! In fact, they don't seem to understand Taiwan at all, because what they're saying sounds so different from the pro-KMT narrative you've picked up from this really positive experience. 

Of course, you defend your wife's and in-laws' views, which you've come to see as reasonable and correct, and you're surprised that all that anger gets spewed at you now. And you're confused about why. Your pan-blue local fam is so nice, and these online haters are so mean, of course you're just going to dig in. 

And poof, you have the odd pro-KMT Westerner who doesn't get why their views on Taiwan are not cool at all, and actually deeply misrepresent Taiwanese history. 

(I use a heterosexual male example here but it's certainly not limited to them. It just seems to be mostly them.)

Now, think of that in terms of China.

You're a college student. You got into Harvard so you're either very smart or very rich (perhaps both, but probably not). You take an interest in Chinese, and sign up for this awesome study abroad program in China. You're aware that China is authoritarian, but you either don't care (if you're rich), or you earnestly don't want to judge people based on their government (if you're smart). 

You go, and you have this amazing time. The Great Wall is stunning! Your Chinese classmates are so friendly! Beijing is so historic! You're learning so much and seeing the world. You take various culture-related classes and fall in love with Chinese culture. You're impressed by the sheer history of it. And all your new friends in China -- who are welcoming and friendly -- also seem to think their government is fine, or at least they don't say it's not. And they're Chinese so they must be right! So your interest in China only deepens based on this amazing experience you've had.  

Then you return to the US and hear all this criticism of China, sometimes by people who've never been to China. You've never been to Taiwan, so you don't have any emotional attachment to it, and anyway in China it was just treated as part of China so you passively absorb that. You think this is ridiculous -- you've been there, it was such an amazing experience, and the portrayal of this "genocidal" and "totalitarian" "surveillance" state doesn't at all match your experience. After all, the government never seemed to be watching you stumble back to your dorm drunk at 4am.

(They probably were, but that's beside the point.)

Of course you feel angry, even speak up. No, we should be deepening our connections with this beautiful country I was so fortunate to visit. We should be engaging them! It's really not so bad! All those critics are so awful, and my Chinese friends are great. So if the critics say there's a genocide but in China I saw no evidence of that, those critics must be wrong or at least it's debatable, right? And Tiananmen was a long time ago, the square looks peaceful now, it's really not a big deal. And look how many people they lifted out of poverty! Does it really matter if it's not a democracy?

And since it's really not so bad, why are people so opposed to Taiwan being governed by China? It's a great country! And Taiwanese speak Mandarin and have the same culture and history, I mean for most of history it was China, right? We really don't need to move to the brink of war over this, do we? And I heard a lot of those "pro-democracy" protesters liked Trump!

I can't say this happens to everyone who studies Mandarin in China, but it's certainly a contributing factor. They go there, have a good experience, and then come back and wonder why everyone's so critical of this "evil" government in a place where they've just had a great time. 

Some might go on to be influential people. Others might go into "Sinology" (hate that word), continue to study Mandarin, or at least retain their connection to China. 

And boom, you get a whole bunch of China experts who are weirdly accommodating and defensive of the absolutely horrific, genocidal Chinese government.

Not all, to be sure. There are those who love the language, cultures and history but not the government, but I've come across enough 'China experts' who will go to bat for the CCP (or at least favor engaging with genocidal dictators) to know it's a thing. 

I'm willing to bet most of them think that their overall pro-China view is part of a larger pro-Asia view, or an integral part of advocacy for Asia. They probably don't realize that China isn't very well-liked in Asia, and standing with other Asian countries is better for the region than being friendly with the CCP.

I also know this because of how close I came to being like that. I didn't formally study Mandarin in China, I just taught English there for a year (whoopty-doo, I know). But I was interested in the country and might've come away feeling more accommodative toward the government if my time there had gone differently. I did have an interesting time, but I wouldn't say it was great. 

I did notice, for example, that I was indeed being monitored to some degree and that made me uneasy.  I got sick a lot, and the pollution was a factor. I made local friends, but I had foreign ones too, and we weren't being shepherded around on a study program. So if one of us felt something was a bit dodgy -- like, oh, realizing that our employer seemed to have far too much knowledge about where we were when not working -- we could touch base and see that we were not imagining things. 

Though I don't talk about it much, I also had a particular experience there that will never leave me. At my going-away party, the younger brother of the school owner got way too drunk and told all the foreigners about how he'd watched his best friend get shot in the head at Tiananmen Square. He'd been there. I'll never know why he told us exactly, but very drunk and these foreigners aren't going to blab and I am subconsciously looking for a way to express this trauma were probably factors.

And I came with an inoculation that so few Americans get from their education system: a Social Studies teacher who actually talked about Taiwan, even though it hadn't been in the curriculum. He'd fought in the Korean War and apparently spent some time here, and kept up with what was going on in the country. So by the time I went to China, I already knew that Taiwan was democratic, that a lot of Taiwanese did not want "unification", that both Chiang and Mao were horrible men who did horrible things, but Mao was worse (or at least, he did horrible things on a grander scale).

So when friendly Chinese people I met would speak of how great their government is, or just treat Taiwan as though it were obviously and irreversibly Chinese, I already knew to smile while inwardly rolling my eyes.

But I could have very easily cultivated a totally different attitude, and be preaching "engaging with China" and "deepening ties" as a Shanghai-based blogger if those cards had not fallen as they did. 

And you'd all hate me. You'd be really mean on social media -- I know I'm mean to the tankies -- and I'd obviously fall back on my amazing experience in China and dismiss you all as haters. My politics lean left and I've worked through a lot of frustration with the slowness of the democratic process, so I might have truly ended up a communist or even a tankie. I hope good sense and a moral compass would've prevented that, but most of us think we have good sense and a moral compass, even those of us who don't. 

Anyway, point is, all that goodwill toward China that program likely fostered among eager Harvarders Harvodians Harvardites Harveoles Harvardi Crimsonosi Cantibrigians (I looked it up) is now going to be fostered toward free, democratic, amazing Taiwan.

And because we can talk about things like Tiananmen Square, Taiwanese identity, Tibet, the Uyghur genocide and more, they'll not only learn the (better, prettier) Traditional characters but also get a more accurate picture of what the rest of Asia really thinks of Chinese aggression.

At the very least, they'll be exposed to a world where the pro-China view is not the default pro-Asia view.

Yay! 

ONE WEIRD TRICK to stop INFLAMMATION OF CHINA TENSIONS that doctors don't want you to know!

 

If you need this explained to you like Richard Dawkins needs explanations of literature, China is the shark.

Two articles appeared recently over Taiwan's vaccine struggles amid a global shortage, one in Nikkei Asia and one in The Guardian. Both articles are fine, though they both get the same thing wrong (which I'll address later). They both cover how Taiwan's attempts to secure enough vaccines to beat the outbreak have turned into a political imbroglio.

However, the media narrative from both can be examined through the titles that editors chose for them, and that's what I'd like to look at. How does an article about Taiwan where the media outlet wishes to center Taiwan craft a headline, compared to an article about Taiwan where editors are stuck in the past and feel they must stick to tired cliches about the Taiwan-China relationship?

Both do the right thing by questioning China's narrative, or by putting it in parentheses, like this: 

China’s altruistic statements have been somewhat contradicted by its objections to the US and Japan donations, and by Taiwanese allegations (which China denies) that it actively blocked a deal Taiwan was working on with the German vaccine producer BioNTech.

This is great: it shows increased interest in and reporting on Taiwan by major international media, and it shows more willingness to look at the Taiwanese perspective or at least consider it through an international or local, rather than Chinese, lens. While international reporting on Taiwan is still tied to China, it's no longer guaranteed to follow the script that China puts forward. That's an improvement. 

However, I will come out and say that the Asia Nikkei piece is superior to the Guardian one. This is not a slight against Helen Davidson, and I'm not trying to pit her against Erin Hale. Rather, the issue is with the titles. 

Asia Nikkei:

Vaccines become political as Taiwan wakes up to COVID reality

President Tsai's approval rating drops as island struggles to procure doses

This isn't great news for Taiwan, but it is a good headline. It's neutral, and it centers Taiwan. China enters the narrative in the actual article, as it must (because it's the one doing the politicizing, with the help of the KMT and their various compradores) but the reader of this article is brought in through a focus on Taiwan.

Skimmers who just read the headlines will come away with that with a reasonably accurate view that something dodgy is going on with vaccine procurement in Taiwan, and might click to find out what those struggles are. Then they learn that the struggles are caused in part by a global shortage, but also Chinese interference.

Compare that to The Guardian: 

How Taiwan’s struggle for Covid vaccines is inflaming tensions with China

As island faces new outbreak and mistrust of Chinese jabs, Beijing objects to donations from US and Japan 

This headline sucks. 

I want to make it clear that headlines are almost always written by editors; writers rarely get a say in them. This is not a jab at Helen Davidson (it is a jab at her editor, but I don't know who that person is.)

It sucks because it totally bungles who is doing the inflaming of what. "Taiwan's struggle for coronavirus vaccines" is not inflaming tensions with China. China is inflaming tensions over Taiwan's vaccine struggle. This is an active choice on the part of the Chinese government, which does indeed have free will. 

All Taiwan is trying to do is get some damn vaccines. They don't want to play political games or "inflame" anything. And tensions aren't gout. They don't inflame on their own. Someone has to inflame them. That someone is China.

The subtitle isn't great either. It's not wrong per se, but the reader is invited to wonder "why would Taiwan distrust Chinese vaccines?" If they don't really know a lot about Taiwan/China issues, and the headline has not clarified that China is the inflamer (not the inflamee) they might preemptively conclude that Taiwan is being unreasonable, when it is not.

It also centers Beijing's reaction to the US and Japanese donations, rather than how these have affected the Taiwanese situation, even though the article is ostensibly about Taiwan. China starts out being centered, and the reader is then invited to keep centering China. 

The actual article is a lot better -- again, this isn't about Davidson's work -- but someone really ought to inflame tensions with the Guardian editors.

You may be curious what the two articles get wrong. It's relatively minor, but worth pointing out one last time. Both include some version of this narrative:

China said Fosun – the Shanghai-based manufacturer with exclusive regional production rights for Pfizer/BioNTech – had offered to supply Taiwan, but Taiwan had refused.

[Drew] Thompson said there were scientific and transparency concerns about China’s vaccines, which made it unsurprising and potentially sensible for Taiwan to reject an offer of Chinese-developed vaccines. But if the Fosun offer is legitimate, refusing it is “entirely political”.

Clearly, Thompson doesn't actually know that Fosun never made a legitimate offer. To distribute your drug in Taiwan, you need to apply through the Taiwan FDA. It is possible to do this, though as Terry Gou is finding out, you can't just leave out important documents. 

Fosun never applied. So it never offered those vaccines to Taiwan in any capacity that Taiwan could officially accept. How can Taiwan reject an offer it never actually received? 

I explore this process in more detail here, by the way.

Hale's article also commits this error, and includes discussion of vaccines actually manufactured in China, not Germany. I can't quote it because I've hit the paywall on Asia Nikkei (I read the article days ago), but it leaves out the fact that Chinese-made drugs are banned in Taiwan, by law. To accept drugs made in China would require changing the law. That's not going to happen. The German-made doses are a gray area, but Fosun would still need to apply. To date, it has not done so. 

A minor point, but one I wish the international media would get this point right.

I'm also really starting to wonder about this Thompson fellow in the Guardian article, however. He says:  

 

“Pfizer and BioNTech have a huge incentive to ensure that the Fosun product is equivalent, so I would think there is no concern,” he said. “There’s no reason not to take it.”

 

But he himself provides a very good reason just a few paragraphs up:

 

If Taiwan accepted Chinese vaccines it would be the political “kiss of death for the DPP [Taiwan’s ruling party]”, Thompson said. “It’s quite likely China would take some sort of gratuitous swipe … see it as a capitulation or recognition of Beijing’s superiority.”

Right -- how is that not a good reason not to take this "offer"? Why is Thompson spinning this as somehow Taiwan's fault?

This is not entirely political: it's also about public health and safety.

China does indeed have every reason to try to harm Taiwan, including tampering with vaccines. And of course, the main reason Fosun never applied is probably because it would require a level of submission that national governments require, not regional ones. Fosun can't just treat Taiwan like Hong Kong and Macau, but to apply, it would essentially have to admit that Taiwan is a place not controlled by China. 

So instead it uses its doses as media fodder, because it knows they're never going to make it to Taiwan. The China-proffered solution to a problem China created is (perhaps literally) a poison chalice.

Why Thompson is implying that this is mostly political on the Taiwanese side despite laying out exactly why it's actually a political move on the Chinese side is beyond me. How is China deliberately inflaming tensions somehow politicking on the part of Taiwan?

There is one more thing both articles fail to clarify. Both are correct that Tsai's popularity has fallen, however, both fail to contextualize this: the general reader might be left with the impression that Tsai's drop in approval is especially concerning. In fact, at about the same time in their administrations (mid-2nd term) both Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou had lower popularity ratings than Tsai. Chen dropped to about 18% I believe, and Ma hit an astounding 9%: the latter was so awful that students occupied the legislature. And they managed to be that unpopular without a pandemic (and with Ma not being constantly attacked by the CCP). 

Taiwanese voters have high expectations and tend to be critical. Properly contextualized, Tsai's 40% is actually pretty impressive. I won't say it's great, but frankly, it's better than one might expect, and surprisingly so. The typical international reader, however, won't realize that from reading these pieces.

A lot of people who think they are knowledgeable about Taiwan and China don't seem to want you to know how to stop this kind of inflammation. A lot of them have PhDs, so it's fair to say that there is indeed one weird trick to stop inflammation of China tensions that doctors don't want you to know. 

It's simple to pinpoint, but difficult to execute. If you want to stop inflammation, the best thing you can do is look for the source. If your feet swell up because you're not wearing supportive shoes, the answer isn't to elevate your feet with an icepack. That will help, but the shoes will just cause inflammation again tomorrow.

The trick is to do something about your shoes.

Ahem. China is the shoes. 

China won't be "provoked" into a war with Taiwan -- it will start a war when it wants to

It may be precarious, but that doesn't mean we should be afraid.

This is an evergreen area of Taiwan discourse, but I'm bringing it up now in relation to the recent visit of three US Senators to Taiwan. As with every move on the part of Taiwan to create good relations and engender statements (or actions that make a statement) showing support for Taiwan, there are always people who respond: but that might provoke China! It might trigger a war! Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know that China might attack Taiwan over them!

This is false. 

It is false because China decides when it is provoked. This is not some reflexive action, like a doctor hitting your knee with a rubber mallet. Have any of these "moves" that could "provoke China" actually done so? I don't see any bombs falling and they seem to be preparing for war at roughly the same rate they have for awhile, so no.

China called the senators' visit "a provocation", but do you see warships sailing over? I don't. Is this likely to be the spark that starts a war? No. 

The CCP made those choices: to slowly and steadily prepare for war, but not be "provoked" into starting one by this or that action in support of Taiwan. 

If China wants to start a war with Taiwan, it will do so because it wants to start a war with Taiwan. It will not be because some US senators visited Taiwan, or Japan sent some vaccines, or the US flag was flown at AIT, or Taiwan changed its passport design. 

To say these moves might "provoke" China is like saying a person "provokes" sexual assault based on what they were wearing, how much they were drinking, what party they were at or what they said or did, No. A sexual predator commits a crime because they decided to commit the crime. Their victim could have worn a baggy t-shirt and consumed only ginger ale. It doesn't matter. Their attacker was not "provoked".  They made a choice. 

You might also think of it as an abusive situation. People in abusive relationships sometimes think that if they tailor their actions a certain way, it might stop or lessen the abuse. This might appear to work on a surface level -- "if I don't wear this shirt that he thinks attracts attention, he won't beat me", "if I do what Aunt Lydia says, she won't cut out my tongue" -- but the abusive dynamic remains. 

The abuser will still abuse when they want to, because they want to, not because they were provoked. If they need an excuse they'll pick one of any potential "provocations", or simply invent one. 

And if you keep tailoring your actions to appease your abuser, then the abuser will continue to lay out more and more 'red lines' which, when crossed, 'provoke' them into abusing you. They control you now, and the abusive dynamic remains. 

If every decision made by Taiwan and its supporters is carefully tailored not to "provoke China", the CCP will simply keep setting stricter parameters of what will "provoke" them until Taiwan is so obedient that might as well be a territory of the People's Republic. And that is indeed the plan. This is intentional. And even if Taiwan and its supporters restrict their actions more and more to appease China, it will still attack whenever it wants to, because it wants to. 

Like a rapist, or an abuser.

The only thing stopping China isn't adhering to the correct moves on our side. It's China's own internal decision-making about whether it's ready for a war or not. That's it. 

China will attack Taiwan when it wants to attack Taiwan. It doesn't matter what Taiwan, the US, Japan or any country does or doesn't do before that time. You can't control their actions by changing yours, just like you can't keep an abuser at bay or end an abusive dynamic by giving in to the abuser's demands.

So send the vaccines. Send the senators. Sail the aircraft carrier. Sell Taiwan weapons. Hell, give Taiwan weapons. Fly whatever flag you want. Sign agreements. Help Taiwan participate in international organizations. Call the de facto Taiwan embassies -- and de facto foreign embassies in Taiwan -- whatever you please.

In fact, please keep it up: if the CCP is going to invade whenever it feels ready, Taiwan will need the support.

And China will only start a war over any one of them if it was already intending to start a war regardless. Even if you don't do these things, it will start that conflict whenever it wants anyway. It'll find an excuse. 

This brings me to another point: I've disagreed recently with those who say China isn't close to attacking Taiwan. In fact, I think China is very much intending to attack Taiwan, though I don't know when. Foreign Minister Joseph Wu seems to agree with me.

I do agree, however, that the hyperbolic language around every single move being one that could "provoke China" serves China. I just won't take that to the conclusion that China isn't going to start a war. It probably is, but neither Taiwan nor any other country will be the ones that "provoked" it. 

I haven't changed my view that complacency -- oh, they're not close to starting a war, we don't need to worry about this -- serves China's purpose just as much as histrionics about every single action being a "provocation", when the entire "provocation" model is built on a lie. It's just that these two views are not mutually exclusive. 

So stop it with the "moves likely to anger China", or "in a move that might provoke China". I know it's mind-blowing to indulge in the notion that China has free will, but it does.

Instead, US and Japan, how about you slide over here, and give us a moment. 

Those moves are so raw, after all. I've got to let you know. You're one of our kind.

Chiang Kai-shek did not save Taiwan from the CCP: Part 2 - what did stop China from taking Taiwan?

This is from a post for some movie I've long forgotten the title of.

This is Part 2 of a longer post. For Part 1, which discusses the ways in which Chiang Kai-shek is actually to blame for CCP interest in Taiwan, click here. 

Because it explores historical factors that I don't think many people are aware of, that post didn't address the core of the bad argument I keep hearing -- that sure the KMT wasn't great, but it's thanks to them that Taiwan isn't a part of the People's Republic of China! 

The belief here actually comes from something else: an interpretation of historical events between approximately 1949 and 1955, which places the ROC as the main bulwark against CCP designs on Taiwan. There's even a pretty terrible News Lens op-ed from a few years ago -- it's so bad that I won't link to it, but I did respond at the time -- that called Chiang "the greatest single fighter of the Chinese Communist Party, bar none", which is funny to me, because they thoroughly defeated him, and in order to hold Taiwan against them, he needed US assistance. 

My main source, once again, is Hsiao-Ting Lin's Accidental State, but I'll also be drawing on other sources, including this article from the Journal of Northeast Asian Studies. I'll try to quote frequently from it for those who don't have access.

I also want to say here that anyone who really knows Taiwanese history is likely already aware of everything I'm about to say; nothing here will surprise you. Instead, this is a sort of self-service: instead of writing the same reply to such comments over and over again, I'm putting it all in one handy blog post that I (and you!) can just link to whenever it inevitably comes up. Again. 

Here's the summary: despite some victories by the Nationalists, we don't have Chiang or his government to thank for Taiwan being saved from incorporation into the People's Republic of China. In fact, it was mostly the US's efforts to contain the CCP that led to Taiwan staying out of PRC hands. This had nothing to do with any sort of sincere care for the ROC on the part of the US, and certainly had nothing at all to do with any sort of goodwill toward Taiwan. Although the Nationalists did score some victories toward the end of the civil war, the lasting repellent that kept the PRC out of Taiwan was (somewhat grudging) American assistance to the ROC, due to a US desire to secure a defense perimeter around the PRC and renewed desire to include Taiwan in that defensive corridor due to the outbreak of the Korean War. 

From the link (all emphasis mine):

If there had not been a Korean War, the Chinese Communists would probably have invaded Taiwan in 1950. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States began to reverse its hands-off policy toward the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan. The Korean War first compelled the United States to grant military aid to Taiwan and then put the island under U.S. protection. The war forestalled the deterioration of the ROC' s international status, but the legal status of Taiwan became undetermined in the eyes of U.S. policymakers....

Both attacks compelled the United States to go to war, and on both occasions this simultaneously saved the Kuomintang (KMT) from total defeat. One high-ranking KMT official even described the Korean War as the Sian incident in reverse - an unexpected twist of fate that saved the KMT from total annihilation. 2 Before the outbreak of the Korean War, KMT-controlled Taiwan (then called Formosa) fell outside the U.S. defense perimeter, and the Truman administration had assumed the final defeat of the KMT to be only a matter of time. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, President Harry S. Truman decided to neutralize Taiwan, both to protect it from communist invasion and to prevent the KMT from using it as a base to mount an assault on the mainland. The Korean War also forced President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson to resume their entanglement with the KMT. 

The details of how all this happened are a bit muddier. Accidental State asserts that the Allies considered many options at different points, including simply allowing the PRC to take Taiwan, a United Nations trusteeship that would help Taiwan transition from Japanese colonial rule and backing of Formosan home rule groups; in other words, post-war US support for the ROC was far shakier and more ambivalent than people seem to believe. Lin (Accidental State) agrees with Lin (article quoted above) that there was a period when Communist takeover of Taiwan was considered "inevitable", and the US was, for a time, prepared to just let that happen. Around 1949-1950, the US made it clear that it would not interfere in the Chinese civil war and that it considered Taiwan to be a part of China. To me, it seems US support was more ambivalent rather than outright dismissive in those years, an ambivalence which remained through 1952, but that might be a topic for a later post.

In Untying the Knot, Richard Bush dismisses this idea that the US ever seriously considered a "trusteeship": 

FDR had his own plans for the island, and allowing international trusteeship of the island and a plebiscite to elicit the wishes of its people was not one of them. In his vision for postwar peace and security, "four policemen" -- the United Sates, Britain, the Soviet Union and China -- would insist on disarmament by most other countries and enforce it through a system of military bases. 

In fact, the idea of UN trusteeship, while it was never of interest to FDR, was of great interest to others, including several Senators and Dean Rusk (who would eventually become Secretary of State) recommended removing Chiang and UN trusteeship for Taiwan to then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Acheson seems to have completely ignored Rusk's letter, and was planning to enlist Sun Liren in a plot to remove Chiang and put Taiwan under new administration, but it never came to be. By 1950 it was considered a bad idea to support an independent Taiwan for a variety of reasons that I mostly disagree with, including a lack of US control over the outcome. 

That whole thing makes the pro-democracy, pro-self-determination, anti-war, anti-Big Power military-enforced imperialism liberal in me want to barf, but hey, that's history for you. It also clarifies that the US has never, at any point, held a sincere interest in the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan. It was always about power. The only way in which I can sign onto that as acceptable is my belief that the PRC did need to be stopped, and still needs to be stopped today, and wagged fingers and disapproving looks were never (and are never) going to accomplish that. Sometimes that entails accepting realities that I really wish weren't...real. 

On everything else, though, he agrees with Lin and Lin: 

In the Truman administration in 1949, there was a consensus that a Communist takeover was both likely -- again because of the Nationalists' political and military ineptitude -- and detrimental to U.S. security interests....

North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950 saved Taiwan and the ROC. Washington -- afraid that the invasion of South Korea was part of a larger campaign by the communists to extend their control and wanting to end the ROC's continuing minor attacks against the mainland -- deployed the 7th fleet to the Taiwan Strait to prevent the PRC and ROC from attacking each other. The net effect, however, was to ensure Chiang's survival. The ROC is was able to retain its seat in the United Nations and diplomatic relations with a majority of the world's countries [for the time being]. The Truman administration justified its policy reversal by saying that because there had been no peace treaty with Japan to dispose of "ownership" of Taiwan, its legal status (whether it was indeed part of China) had not been determined; thus its security was an international issue, not a purely domestic one.

You don't actually care about Taiwan for Taiwan's sake just as you've never cared about any other country for its own sake, and you never did, but Taiwan still needed the PRC stopped. So thanks, America! 

But also no thanks, because your previous ambivalence and lack of interest in home rule or international trusteeship is what precipitated the KMT occupation and subsequent military dictatorship and campaign of mass murder in the following decades. Yet you seemed fine with that. Yikes, America! 

Some might use that information to argue that for the brief period that it lacked strong US support, that the ROC did, in fact, "save" Taiwan by staving off the Communists without US help. 

And I can't deny that they won a few victories (Guningtou being the most prominent one that I'm aware of) in that time period. They were, according to Accidental State, "at least able to stop and search ships flying the flags of either Nationalist China or the PRC in the territorial waters surrounding Taiwan and the other Nationals-controlled isles to prevent military supplies from reaching Communist-held ports" and they had a "weak but still-functional naval capacity". (Why they would also search ships flying the Nationalist flag is unclear to me, but also irrelevant here.) 

But, the Communists were exhausted -- I can't find the source but I've read somewhere that the PRC attack on Guningtou was carried out by a rather ragtag group of falling-apart junks, they had insufficient supplies, and the main reason the ROC won was because one of their ships was in Kinmen awaiting a delivery of foodstuffs that they were going to smuggle to China. Indeed, they were still putting down "bandits" across China, and not only is the Taiwan Strait in fact ridiculously hard to navigate but also Taiwan itself is difficult to land on as an invading force. So, sure, we can give some credit where it's due, but there was a lot of luck involved, too. 

Let's not forget, however, that not only did the ROC's claim to Taiwan precipitate the Communists' interest in the first place, but their landing here also likely redoubled CCP desire to take Taiwan. From Bush:

Ever since the Cairo Declaration of December 1943, Mao Zedong and his revolutionary colleagues had set their sights on seizing the island as well as the mainland, and Taiwan became part of their mission of national recovery and unification. That their civil war rivals, whom they termed the "Chiang Kai-shek reactionary clique" planned to mount a last ditch stand on Taiwan was all the more reason to take the island. 

In fact, those years when one might argue that the KMT bravely and successfully fought off the PRC looked very different from the perspective of Chiang and his minions. Accidental State describes Chiang's attitude at this time as: 

so disheartened that, at one point in early June [1950], he seemed to truly believe it was no longer possible for him to find a living space in this world. In his personal diary around this time, Chiang, despite a despairing situation, still hoped against hope to fight against the "dark forces" for his very survival to the last...Adopting the posture of apparent self-abegnation that he had taken with President Truman, on June 15 Chiang passed the following message to MacArthur..."The Generalissimo, aware of teh danger of his position, is agreeable to accept American high command in every category and hopes to interest General MacArthur to accept this responsibility...soliciting his advice, guidance and direction."

Ha ha.

Sorry, I just hate Chiang Kai-shek so much that any despair of his, no matter how far in the past and even though he's dead and rotting at Cihu, gives me great joy.

Given that, what honestly matters more from a historical perspective is what forces helped keep the PRC away long-term. And, again, the answer to that is US strategic interests, not any sort of military genius or salvation by the ROC.

Lin goes on to call Chiang's solicitation of a mutual defense treaty with the US in the early 1950s as "desperate", and discusses in detail how Taipei anticipated that the outbreak of war in Korea would need to a US need to engage with them more proactively, and might even give them the necessary "in" to get the US involved in their desire to re-take China. They wanted nothing more than to be included in the US defense perimeter, their initial exclusion evoking the terror in Chiang outlined above. In 1950, Chiang even offered to send 33,000 troops to the Korean war effort, which the US rejected. From the linked article: 

President Truman objected to MacArthur's suggestion of a "military policy of aggression" and he had deliberately rejected President Chiang Kaishek's offer to send 33,000 Nationalist troops to assist South Korea because "it would be a little inconsistent to spend American money to protect an island while its natural defenders were somewhere else."

They did eventually get their wish: 

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) intervention in the Korean War struck the U.S. Eighth Army and X Corps a heavy blow in November 1950, and the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] began to question President Truman's military neutralization of Formosa. On November 20, 1950, the JCS sent the Department of Defense a memorandum, to which acting Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett concurred....

The JCS then emphasized "the strategic importance of Formosa" and suggested that "it would be desirable to have port facilities and airfield on Formosa available to the United States," if a full-scale war should develop against Communist China and the Soviet Union. The new Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall, who was not as supportive of the KMT as his predecessor Louis Johnson, argued that Taiwan was "of no particular strategic importance" in U.S. hands, but it "would be of disastrous importance if it were held by an enemy."  In December 1950, Truman indicated to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee that Chiang Kai-shek intended to get the United States involved militarily on the Chinese mainland. Under pressure from the U.S. Senate, Truman stated the United States would not allow Formosa to fall into Communist hands. 

By January 1951, Taiwan had received military hardware worth US $29 million....Later that same month, the State Department instructed the U.S. embassy in Taipei to exchange notes with the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which led to a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (MDAA) between the two governments.  The MDAA was designed to legitimize the use of incoming U.S. military aid to Formosa for the island's internal security and self-defense.

The Korean War was so central to the continued existence of Taiwan that its end was considered a potential problem by the ROC:

If the Korean War was the salvation of the ROC, an armistice in Korea could naturally complicate the U.S.-Taiwan security relationship. On March 19, 1953, ROC Ambassador Wellington Koo explored the question of a U.S.- ROC mutual security pact, but received a cold response from Secretary of State Dulles. 4n In June 1953, Chiang Kai-shek wrote at least two letters to President Eisenhower probing the possibility of U.S.-initiated Asian multilateral mutual security pacts. 45 Although Eisenhower believed that a mutual security arrangement must come from the Asian nations themselves, by August 1953 the United States had concluded mutual defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. 

The ROC government took the initiative and handed a draft U.S.-ROC mutual security pact to U.S. Ambassador Rankin on December 18, 1953. 

And if it wasn't clear that US aid to Taiwan at that time was aimed at helping the Nationalists defend an island they honestly could not hold on their own: 

On October 7, 1954, President Eisenhower revealed to Dulles that he had decided to conclude a security treaty with the ROC provided that Generalissimo Chiang was prepared to assume a defensive posture on Taiwan....

In January 1955 when the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the ROC was pending ratification by the U.S. Congress, PRC forces attacked some small offshore positions, including the I-chiang and Tachen islands. At a NSC meeting on January 20, Dulles suggested the United States grant logistical support to the ROC to evaluate the Ta-chen islands and that President Eisenhower be authorized by Congress to use forces in the Taiwan Strait if necessary. On January 29, Congress voted favorably on the so-called Formosa Resolution authorizing Eisenhower to "employ the Armed Forces of the United States for protecting the security of Formosa, the Pescadores and related positions and territories of that area." The Formosa Resolution implicitly granted protection to Quemoy and Matsu.  

I reiterate: without US help, the Communists would have taken Taiwan -- and sooner rather than later -- an interest the CCP only cultivated in the first place because the ROC claimed it and then retreated there. Chiang Kai-shek was desperate and despondent.

He is not the hero of staving off the Communists that you think he is. He is not the hero of anything unless you think mass murder is great. 

This is also the situation which led to Taiwan's status being undetermined rather than agreed-upon as a part of China, a topic that also deserves its own post. It's worth remembering that even then-foreign minister to the ROC George Kung-chao Yeh knew that. The KMT later playing at Taiwan's status being clear in an attempt to close the door to independence is an absolute joke at odds with their own history.

In these and the following years, US aid to Taiwan spiked dramatically. Jacoby (U.S. Aid to Taiwan) first says military assistance between 1952 and 1965 reached a total of US$2.5 billion, but his later chart says $368 million. Though I'm not sure where the first number comes from, the exact number is less important than the fact that it was a lot. From Lin (the article, not the Accidental State author):

 

Without U.S. economic assistance in the early 1950s, Taiwan's economy might possibly have collapsed. In 1950 alone, retail prices in Taiwan rose 58 percent, from mid-1949 to 1951 wholesale prices rose 400 percent, and by early 1951, ROC-held gold and foreign exchange reserves were nearly exhausted....Approximately 80 percent of the national budget went to the military, so the island's economy could be sustained only with external assistance. An NSC report pointed out that "had it not been for increased MSA [Mutual Security Agency] aid during the fiscal years 1951 and 1952, a serious inflationary situation would have developed which might have well led to complete economic collapse.”

All of this aid was not meant just to bolster Taiwan's defense capability, but also to make the island more self-sufficient, a goal which was eventually reached.

Also -- oops, it looks like I just made an argument that US strategic interests, not brilliant economic planning on the part of the KMT, is what kickstarted the Taiwan Miracle. 

Let's not forget, however, that 1952-1965 more or less correlated with the White Terror years. So...thanks, America. But also yikes, America! 

I'm not trying to convince you here that the US is Taiwan's good friend. It's not -- yet again, a topic for an entirely different post. What I am trying to convince you of is simple: 

Like them, hate them or grudgingly tolerate them as the devil we can make a deal with because they're not the ones pointing missiles at us, the US had more to do with repelling a PRC takeover of this country than Chiang Kai-shek and his merry band of murderers ever did. 

Chiang Kai-shek did not save Taiwan from the CCP: Part 1 - the origins of CCP interest in Taiwan

I took this photo years ago and it seemed appropriate to finally use it here.

I had thought I'd written about this before, but couldn't find an appropriate post. So, because it seems like I address this opinion frequently and I'm sick of repeating myself, it's time to write it all out here so I can link it next time someone comes out with a wacky historical interpretation of what actually happened after the Chinese Civil War. 

Also, Dictatorship Day is tomorrow (that's 10/10 for those of you who are still sleeping), so this feels like a good time to write such a post. 

So, what am I on about? Every few weeks, either wild-caught or while I'm talking about one of my favorite subjects (what an absolute sack of wankers the KMT is), someone seems to pop into one of my feeds with a comment along the lines of "yes but without Chiang Kai-shek/the KMT/the ROC army Taiwan would be a part of Communist China now".

These include comments by good people -- it's not personal. I've been wrong about history too. It's okay. But we need to deal with it.

This needs to be tackled in a few parts, in fact. First, I think it's important to clarify what exactly the KMT and CCP each thought of Taiwan in the years leading up to the Taiwan conflict. Only then do I think we'll have a good basis for discussing the degree to which Chiang and the KMT are not responsible for keeping Taiwan CCP free.

So first, let me make the case that Chiang Kai-shek is to blame for the CCP's interest in Taiwan in the first place. 

You read that right. It's all his (and the KMT's) fault that this is a problem to begin with.

I don't have many links for you because my biggest source is one of my favorite books, Accidental State by Hsiao-ting Lin, but I will link where I can. 

In 1924, Sun Yat-sen did include Taiwan in his Three Principles of the People, and it's likely Chiang got the idea to include Taiwan in the territories claimed by the Nationalists at the summit in Cairo in 1943 from this, according to Lin. Here's the thing though: Sun also included all sorts of places that no reasonable person believes "China" should control, including parts of Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan etc. It also is not clear from Sun's other writing that when visiting Taiwan (he visited twice, I believe) he considered it to be anything other than Japanese territory.

What does matter is this: it was not clear until right before the meeting at Cairo that Taiwan would be included in Nationalist territorial claims the way, say, Manchuria certainly would be, as Taiwan had been ceded legally under the Treaty of Shimonoseki whereas the Nationalists had never accepted Japan's conquest of Manchuria. Before that, the ROC, its officials and Chiang himself had more or less treated Taiwan as a part of Japan, including opening a consular office in Taipei "under the jurisdiction of its legation in Tokyo". Chiang even spoke to Japanese politicians about how ending colonial rule in Taiwan and Korea could help bolster relations between China and Japan! To say the least, before 1941, Nationalist views of Taiwan and clear ideas about what Taiwan should be were, to use Lin's words, "murky", "cautious", uncertain" and "undetermined". 

The change in rhetoric to seriously consider claiming Taiwan happened after Pearl Harbor, when the ROC more or less saw an opportunity and decided to grab it. It was around that time that a definition of what constituted "lost" territories to be recovered was created by Chiang, and the top concerns regarding what should be included and what shouldn't were more geo-strategic than ideological.

In fact, according to Lin, the decision to include Taiwan as a claimed territory wasn't even finalized until after Chiang had received the invitation to Cairo! Until then it had been a matter of debate and exactly which "lost" territories ought to be "recovered" was very much a matter of debate.

George Kerr also notes in Formosa Betrayed that Allied attempts to gain intelligence on Taiwan from their Chinese allies showed how little interest the Nationalists actually had in Taiwan, as most of it was lazily thrown together at best, or outright fabricated at worst (to be fair, Lin finds Kerr's accounts to be generally exaggerated). 

The inclusion of Taiwan didn't start gaining truly serious ROC domestic or international traction until the Allies signed onto it at Cairo, and even then, to quote Kerr, the only reason the West was willing to prop up Chiang's claims was to help him save face as the self-proclaimed greatest leader and bringer of "democracy" to Asia (again, to be fair, no-one else in Asia at that time could reasonably claim the title of supreme democratic reformer, either). They knew perfectly well that his regime would require massive support from the West.

(It's worth taking a brief side-note here to point out that the result of Cairo was a declaration, not a treaty. The actual series of treaties that followed the Japanese surrender do not clarify to whom Taiwan was ceded nor what its status is.)

At the same time, the Communists seemed to hold a very different view of Taiwan. Mao's rhetoric on the topic somewhat implied that Taiwan had the right to some, if not total, sovereignty, and the CCP listed "Taiwanese" among the "minority nationalities" that had "equal rights" in "Soviet China", but were considered to be a distinct group or race from Chinese with their own homeland. 

I'm going to quote from the link above at length, because unlike Accidental State and Formosa Betrayed, two books you absolutely should spend your money on, this is a journal article and not everyone will have access. I've emphasized important points:

This position of the Sixth Congress was reiterated in the same year by the Fifth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Youth League, which in its regulations noted that the "minority na- tionalities" in China included "Mongols, Koreans, Taiwanese, Annamese, etc.," and urged that local organs form national minority committes.5 Two years later in Kiangsi, the "Draft Constitution of the China Soviet Republic," adopted by the First All-China Soviet Congress (November 7, 1931), extended constitutional rights to these same minority nationalities.6 According to Item 4 of this document, all races, that is the "Han, Manchu, Mongol, Mohammedan, Tibetan, Miao, Li and also the Taiwanese, Koreans, and Annamese who reside in China, are equal under the laws of Soviet China [emphasis added]." Taiwanese were seen not as Han but as a different "nationality" and even "race," who like the Koreans and the Annamese, but unlike the other minorities, came from a homeland separate from China.8 This view is strengthened by the fact that the CCP never referred to the Taiwanese as "brethren" (dixiong), or "the offspring of the Yellow Emperor," or "compatriots" (tongbao), who would de facto belong to the Han after they return to China. Indeed, a 1928 Central Committee Notice, while calling for the recovery from Japan of sovereignty over Shantung and Manchuria, failed to mention a similar goal for Taiwan in its seventeen "general goals of the present mass movement."9 Since the ideological perspectives of the early Chinese Communist elite were heavily influenced by an anti-Japanese (as well as an anti-Western) nationalism born out of the May Fourth Movement, this exclusion of Taiwan from recoverable sovereign territory of China is revealing.

 



(Yes, that is one long paragraph.)

It gets better, though: 

Mao Tse-tung's earliest comments on the Taiwanese came in his January 1934 "Report of the China Soviet Republic Central Executive Committee and the People's Committee to the Second All-China Soviet Congress." Commenting on various provisions in the 1931 Constitution, he said: Item 15 of the Draft Constitution of Soviet China has the following statement: 

To every nationality in China who is persecuted because of revolutionary acts and to the revolutionary warriors of the whole world, the Chinese Soviet Government grants the right of their being protected in Soviet areas, and assists them in renewing their struggle until a total victory of the revolutionary movement for their nationality and nation has been achieved. In the Soviet areas, many revolutionary comrades from Korea, Taiwan, and Annam are residing. In the First All-China Soviet Congress, representatives of Korea had attended. In the present Congress, there are a few representatives from Korea, Taiwan, and Annam. This proves that this Declaration of the Soviet is a correct one.’

Mao not only reaffirmed the Chinese Communist position that Taiwanese residing outside Taiwan and in China were a "minority nationality," but also implied CCP recognition and support of an independent Taiwan national liberation movement, which would be united in a joint effort with the Chinese movement, but with a different purpose, i.e., the establishment of an independent state similar to other Japanese colonies, such as Korea. 

A year later, Mao and P'eng Teh-huai manifestly dissociated Taiwan's political movement from China by incorporating it into the anti-imperialist revolution led by the Japanese Communist Party. According to the "Resolution on the Current Political Situation and the Party's Responsibility," passed at a meeting of the CCP Central Political Bureau on 25 December, 1935, and signed by P'eng and Mao: 

Under the powerful leadership of the Japanese Communist Party, the Japanese workers and peasants and the oppressed nationalities (Korea, Taiwan) are preparing great efforts in struggling to defeat Japanese Imperialism and to establish a Soviet Japan. This is to unite the Chinese revolution and Japanese revolution on the basis of the common targets of "defeating Japanese imperialism." The Japanese revolutionary people are a powerful helper of the Chinese revolutionary people." 

Here Taiwanese were not considered an integral part of the "Chinese revolutionary people," but were treated as a people whose natural political role was to fight alongside the "Japanese workers and peasants" in establishing a Soviet Japan. Whether Mao and P'eng expected the Taiwanese (and Koreans) formally to join a newly-created Soviet Japan is unclear from this resolution. But nowhere in this or other documents examined by the authors did CCP leaders suggest that the Taiwanese should fight to return to their "motherland" and join Soviet China - a point they would not make until after 1943.

That's my underline, so let me reiterate:

...a point they would not make until after 1943.

What changed between when these statements were made and 1943?

Oh yeah! All that stuff the Nationalists did, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, to change China's perspective on Taiwan toward claiming it as an integral territory and 'lost' province. 

It is not unreasonable to assert that the CCP changed its stance on Taiwan because the Nationalists had done so first. 

Guess what - it gets even better. Please enjoy:

As to explicit CCP support for an independent state on Taiwan, the most notable documentary evidence is Mao's personal statement made to Edgar Snow on July 16, 1936. Responding to Snow's question, "Is it the immediate task of the Chinese people to regain all the territories lost to Japanese imperialism, or only to drive Japan from North China, and all Chinese territory above the Great Wall?," Mao answered: 

It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty below the Great Wall. This means that Manchuria must be regained. We do not, however, include Korea, formerly a Chinese colony, but when we have re-established the independence of the lost territories of China, and if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Formosa. As for Inner Mongolia, which is populated by both Chinese and Mongolians, we will struggle to drive Japan from there and help Inner Mongolia to establish an autonomous State. 

The support for independence of Korea and Taiwan, both of which were formerly linked to China, is clearly stated.

There is some solid analysis in this otherwise older source about why the CCP policy was able to shift, and an interesting discussion of what constitutes "Chineseness" in the eyes of the CCP -- at least, the best possible analysis of it in 1979.

The authors also go on to provide more source material for Lin's analysis of the shifting Nationalist position on Taiwan pre-1943, pointing out that Taiwan was of minor importance before Cairo, belying the massive importance placed on it by the Nationalists after the conference. They go on to posit that Chiang's original goal was quite possibly very similar to the CCP's: to "liberate" Korea and Taiwan so as to create buffer states between China and Japan! 

Because I believe in free access to academic work, here's another quote:

What is important here is that Chiang, like Sun, was more concerned with "restoring" (hufifu) the independence and freedom of Taiwan and Korea so as to create buffer states against Japan, while China would assume traditional protection, but not necessarily sovereignty, over Taiwan and Korea. Moreover, throughout Chiang's pre-1942 collected works and speeches nowhere does he make a claim to “recover" (shoufu, guangfu or shouhut) Taiwan. The island was mentioned occasionally, along with Korea, but only in the sense that both nations were enslaved by the Japanese. No mention of the Taiwanese appeared in such strong nationalist tracts as "Prepare For Victory," nor in his message on "Resistance in the Enemy's Rear."

Although the ability of the CCP to shift so easily to a "Taiwan is an inseparable part of China" stance is of interest, the reason why they chose to do so at all is of more interest to me. Again, it all points back to Cairo, and we have Chiang Kai-shek and his minions to thank for that.

Hsiao and Sullivan (the heroes of this heavily-quoted article) reached the same (hedged) conclusion in 1979:

This tentatively suggests that the Chinese Communist position on the Taiwan question became most politically expedient after the 1943 Cairo Declaration when, still out of power, and in a subordinate position vis-a-vis the KMT, the CCP dropped its support for Taiwan's independent status and embraced Chiang Kai-shek's then very recent policy of full political reintegration of Taiwan into the Chinese polity.

!!!

I emphasized that in three different ways to draw your attention to it. It's analysis, not fact, but I happen to think it's right on the money. 

In other words, Chiang didn't "save" Taiwan from the Communists. He led them right into claiming Taiwan as a territory. If Chiang and the Nationalists had never fed that fire, it's entirely possible (though far from assured, to be fair yet again) that the CCP would have never become as interested in Taiwan as an integral part of China as they did. They might have had designs on it, after all they got involved in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, but note that Korea and Vietnam don't suffer from the lack of diplomatic recognition or the same territorial claims by China (or at least, in Vietnam's case, not to the same extent) that Taiwan does.

And yet, there are still people who believe that Chiang deserves some sort of credit for keeping the Communists away from Taiwan. I would ask -- why? He's responsible for their claims on Taiwan in the first place!

At this point we veer into speculative history: if the Nationalists had never decided to claim Taiwan, would they have occupied Taiwan at the behest of the Allies in 1945, for convenience's sake? I don't know, as occupying Taiwan as a proxy of the Allies is not the same as occupying it as a claimed territory, but it seems at least somewhat less likely. In any case, it is less likely to have become the location of their retreat upon losing the civil war a few years later. This means that perhaps (?) the Nationalists might have been wiped out completely -- not a bad outcome, in my estimation, though the CCP disappearing would be even better.

If the KMT had not retreated to Taiwan, would the CCP have ever set its sights on the island? Possibly. There would have been so-called "justification" for it in Sun's writing, and they certainly were (and are) expansionist.

But their own writings indicate that it might not have rolled out that way, and Taiwan would have gained its independence in the same era as many other former colonies across Asia: Korea, most of Southeast Asia, India and more. 

Some of those former colonies have struggled (the Philippines, Myanmar, India, Indonesia), in part due to local issues and in part thanks to everything that was stolen from them or forced upon them by their colonizers. Others (Korea, Singapore) eventually succeeded -- if we take democracy and freedom as important markers of success, Korea even more than Singapore. As a relatively prosperous colony under the Japanese with much of its infrastructure already built (and built well), how might Taiwan have fared? We'll never know, but it's not a given that it would have been worse than under KMT rule. 

Importantly, if this is how it had played out, there might not have been any question now of whether Taiwan was a 'part of China', any more than that question is being asked of those other countries. All the missiles, all the threats, all the fighter jets -- none of it would be dangled over our heads by an angry CCP. 

All because they slobbered after the Nationalists and that led their sights right to Taiwan.

Blame the CCP, yes, but also...blame the KMT. They literally created this mess. They literally wrote the paper on how to screw Taiwan.