Hou You-yih: Just, like, my opinion, man

The KMT: promising a deep bucket of candy they can't deliver since 1945 (or earlier)

I have been so busy lately that keeping up with Taiwanese politics as presidential campaigns kick into gear has been a challenge in itself. Having opinions is tiring; distilling them into coherent points and typing those points out feels insurmountable. It hardly matters: there are so many insights from sharper people than me that you can read, including Donovan Smith, Chieh-ting Yeh and reporting from Nectar Gan, who does the "Taiwan history blurb" better than just about any journalist. If you're still writing "since 1949" in your articles, stop, read Gan's version, and yell at your editor. (Trust me, if they're the "amid rising tensions, China is provoked" type, they deserve it.) 

But I do have opinions, watching the Year in Taiwan Politics unfold as I try to just exist and make all the moving parts of my life cohere into some sort of forward-moving apparatus. Today, I feel like sharing my opinion on the KMT presidential candidate Hou You-yih.

Hou is...interesting. He was chosen by fiat -- for the primary, party chair Eric Chu essentially grabbed the gavel and shouted "Mine! I choose!" But also not: it seems quite clear that Chu doesn't care for Hou personally or politically. I think he'd prefer himself, or some other born-to-be-blue descendant of the China '49ers, certainly not someone who doesn't always toe the party line as envisioned by, say, Ma Ying-jeou. When Chu has all the power, why choose Hou? 

Because, of course, Chu thinks Hou can win. Even when you have all the power, and no matter how deeply embedded your dismissiveness and condescension toward people with ancestral Taiwanese roots, in a democracy you still have to take seriously the person who might be able to win over the public. 

I should be at least mildly relieved: the other big name candidate was Foxconn chair and general asshole-about-town Terry Gou, whose message centers Taiwan's economic development but doesn't even try to hide his slavering desire to sell Taiwan to China for his own "everyone's" profit. Gou tried to position himself as the potential CEO of Taiwan, but all he ever inspired in me was the sort of visceral hatred you have for your worst-ever boss. After all, there are many types of "successful" CEO: the ones who care about both people and business and foster supportive and satisfying work environments, and the ones who focus entirely on money and don't care that their company is a shit place to work.

There's a reason Foxconn has a reputation for a place you park yourself for awhile to make bank, but not a good place to work long-term. Thus, it could be deduced that he might be focused on money, but he wouldn't make Taiwan a better place to live.  For obvious reasons, I absolutely did not want to be any kind of employee in Gou's promised Taiwan, Inc. 

Hou, in comparison, seems like the less-terrifying choice. Apparently, he was once considered a potential DPP recruit. Thus far he's mostly avoided professing the deep-blue pro-China nonsense that disgusts me and turns off most Taiwanese (support for unification with China enjoys no meaningful support, and most Taiwanese don't identify as Chinese). Some of his comments have been pretty sus, though -- for example, that "the Republic of China is a cup, Taiwan is the water", which I won't even dignify with a response. Do enjoy this meme, though:

I could point to other substantive reasons why I don't care for Hou: for example, while I didn't like Mayor Ko, I can't deny that Taipei improved in some measurable ways under his leadership. New Taipei under Hou? Friends who live there complain of sidewalks, where they exist, paved with slippery kitchen tiles, a reduced but still overly-prevalent gang presence and public transit options that have improved but remain frustrating (for example, there are still very few straight-shot transit routes from Luzhou to Taipei; most meander in circles). 

Does it really matter, though? I think we all know that I just don't like the KMT because I think Taiwan is clearly already independent, and the KMT thinks it is some iteration of "China". I am against mass murder; the KMT makes ridiculous excuses for its mass murders in decades past. 

I don't particularly like the DPP's Lai Ching-te, but I simply wouldn't support any candidate the KMT chose, ever. In their current form, any KMT candidate would be too sympathetic to China and not sufficiently willing to defend Taiwan to the last. I'm willing to admit my bias, and I am not even remotely sorry. 

The deepest greens will point to one of Hou's greatest historical mistakes: his involvement in the death of activist, writer and Taiwan independence supporter Nylon Deng. As a police captain, Hou led the raid on Deng's office, which led to Deng's self-immolation. 

Image of Nylon Deng from an exhibit at the Tainan Fine Arts Museum (since ended)

Hou has said he was "just following orders" and it was his duty to uphold "justice", regardless of the "party in charge". He's said he doesn't have any regrets. 

I don't think Hou should go to jail. I don't think he should be excommunicated from Taiwanese society. I think, given appropriate contrition, forgiveness is possible: after all, Hou did not directly murder Deng. 

However, I do not think a man such as Hou should be the president of Taiwan, now or ever. 

The Nylon Deng Memorial Foundation has pointed out that before his death, Deng said "they can only take my body, they will never take me alive" -- sending a clear message about what would happen in just this circumstance. One might argue that a suicide threat should not prevent the police from "doing their job", but I do believe Hou had the means to understand that message and thus the likely consequences of his actions at the time. When he says the police mission had "also been about saving a life" but was "not successful", the disingenuousness is palpable. He knew that the mission in fact caused a death, and he had the necessary information to predict it would happen.

I do believe, somewhere deep down, Hou You-yih has the ability to understand what it means to be ethical and principled. In 1989, he had knowledge to understand that what he was doing was wrong. On some level, I suspect he surely knew that he was not upholding "justice" and doing it "regardless of party". I can't prove this, but I think Hou knew that the law Deng allegedly broke, which precipitated the mission, was not just. 

Of course, people act in ways they know are wrong and unjust all the time, and justify it to themselves. "Just following orders". "My boss told me to do it." "That's the rule." I'm the sort of person who will walk away from just about anything if I believe it is wrong, whether that's a toxic person harming others, or a workplace whose actions I cannot defend. Certainly I know people who've said they might do something against their principles if it's necessary to keep their job. Okay -- but they're not running for president. 

A worthy leader needs to know and be able to elucidate right from wrong. They need an inner fortitude that carries them through a clear reflection on their past actions, and the ability to admit they acted unjustly. They need to at least acknowledge the existence of the truth, even if their political career forces them to skirt a direct confrontation. 

When they know something is not right, they need to focus on the steps required to improve the situation. Their solutions may not be perfect, but they need to at least be headed down a vaguely correct path. For example, President Tsai has been fairly weak on labor rights, hasn't delivered quite the necessary changes in immigrant rights and is perhaps somewhat weak on energy policy. But she's oriented in more or less the right direction, and that's good enough for me. It has to be.

And when they see something is truly, deeply wrong, they need to own up to that. This may require walking away. The people I want to lead Taiwan would walk away from their cop job because they were fully aware that the actions they were ordered to carry out were a miscarriage of justice. They'd walk away because regardless of the law, it was wrong -- not for partisan reasons, but ethical ones.

Of course, I'm not stupid. I know Hou would never have done the right thing. Most people wouldn't. It doesn't make them wholly irredeemable. But then, most people aren't trying to be president.

The future president of Taiwan needs a certain strength of character which, from his own statements, Hou does not possess. To point to your "orders" or call something "justice" that you know is unjust is to be weak. 

To be asked about it years later and remain unrepentant makes forgiveness impossible. He could have done better. I cannot imagine ever supporting a KMT candidate, but I wouldn't be so deeply averse to him if he could just face the past honestly and clarify that he understands what justice means -- to admit that he now understands that the law was wrong, and he erred in carrying it out.

Right now, it is not at all clear that he indeed does know what justice means, or perhaps he doesn't care. And a leader who doesn't understand or care about justice is exactly the sort of spineless jellyfish leader who would surrender Taiwan to China without a fight because he was ordered to do so by a sufficiently threatening entity. I don't think Hou would abjectly or directly hand Taiwan to China in the way Terry Gou so clearly wants to, or Ma Ying-jeou tried to, up to and including his solo acoustic 2023 China Jackboot Apology Tour (which probably gave the KMT heart palpitations -- they don't like to say the quiet part quite that loud).

Hou isn't Ma or Gou -- but he wouldn't be Taiwan's greatest defender, either. 

I'm not Taiwanese. Nylon Deng's history is not my history -- but not even I can forgive this, simply because I know right from wrong. Hou is weak, and he is wrong. In refusing to reflect honestly on his past actions, he shows a lack of principles, spine and character.

Hou You-yih may not be an entirely terrible person, but he is a weak man with a weak character who is not fit to lead the country. 

The real-world consequences of US-China "Great Power" thinking

As usual, China-Taiwan commentators not from or based in Taiwan sound like sad old hamburger waiters prattling on about sauces.

It's not often that I write a whole post based on one fantastically stupid tweet, but here we are on this warm Sunday morning. 

Supporters of Taiwan have been more vocal in recent years, pushing back on the trope that conflict "over Taiwan" would fundamentally be a US-China issue, that the entire war scenario would be the outcome of a rivalry between these two nations. 

This is obviously wrong: Taiwan isn't some piece of land being fought over, it's a country full of people who have their own lives, thoughts, beliefs and desires. Those beliefs and desires are central to the issue, not some side discussion.

At its core, this is the China-Taiwan conflict: China insists on annexing Taiwan, but Taiwan will never accept being part of China. China will accept no other resolution. Taiwan will never cede itself, will never choose peaceful unification. They know what life is like under CCP rule; regardless, most Taiwanese don't think of themselves as Chinese, aren't governed by China and don't want to be part of China. There's no alternative, no compromise. How can there be, given the total lack of respect China has for both agreements and democracy? 

This is the heart of it: not the US, not some "Great Game", not a rivalry between two countries or two military buildups. And no, the desire of the Taiwanese people to continue to govern themselves is not some US psyops campaign. It's organic and began in Taiwan.

China wants Taiwan but Taiwan does not want to be part of China. That's it. Taiwan is right and China is wrong, because all Taiwan wants is to govern itself in peace, whereas China is a brutal dictatorship willing to start a war. China's demands are top-down: they come from the CCP. In Taiwan, the people don't want to be part of China. It's not the same, it's not US-driven, and this matters.

There is one peaceful resolution, then: China must be deterred.

Enter the stupid tweet: 

Striking that some think talking about destroying TSMC in a Taiwan war is too hot.

US bases and territory - and possibly the homeland - would very likely be under direct attack.

Nuclear weapons would be on the table. China gets it. That’s why it’s in nuclear breakout. 1/

— Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby) May 6, 2023

This is what happens when you do, in fact, lose sight of the fundamentals of this conflict and think of everything in terms of the US, or the US vs. China. That every outcome is a result of something the US or China does, and not the will of Taiwan or simply what happens in wartime.

The basic assumption here is that in the event of China invading Taiwan that someone might actively blow up TSMC, wreaking havoc on global chip supply and multiple technology sectors.

China probably wouldn't do this, as they want that sweet, sweet tech. But the US probably wouldn't either, as TSMC's chips are central to the global economy. I don't think Taiwanese military forces would do this, because the country wants to be able to recover post-war. Besides, it would not be necessary.

TSMC has said rather openly that their own fabs would be "inoperable" if China invaded Taiwan. Here's the full quote: 

"Nobody can control TSMC by force. If you take a military force or invasion, you will render TSMC factories non-operable.  Because this is a sophisticated manufacturing facility, it depends on the real-time connection with the outside world. With Europe, with Japan, with the US. From materials to chemicals to spare parts to engineering software diagnosis. It's everybody's effort to make this factory operable. So if you take it over by force, it can no longer be operable."

They themselves have also said that chips are not as important as, well, democracy:

"Had there been a war in Taiwan, probably the chip is not the most important thing we should worry about. Because [after this invasion] is the destruction of the world rule-based order, the geopolitical landscape would totally change."

This is not something one side would do intentionally to harm the other, not a strategy US would employ to fight China -- it is simply what would happen if war broke out. It is not related to attacks "on the homeland" or "US bases". 

This has real-world consequences. Once we start talking about TSMC's destruction as though it's something the US would do, people freak out at the "hot war" scenarios of the US, perhaps even call it provocative or unnecessarily aggressive. Support for standing with Taiwan erodes, perhaps this is felt in the electoral realm and we choose governments that will abandon Taiwan to China, all because we think our own involvement would involve "destroying" TSMC, when that was never, and could never be, on the table.

I thought for awhile about whether TSMC would wreck itself in the advent of war. Perhaps, but I don't think so: they wouldn't have to. The operation TSMC runs is so sophisticated, so high-tech, that it would survive neither physical threats -- bombs, fires -- nor a disruption in global supply chain logistics.

Liu says it himself: this isn't a simple factory we're talking about. It's not something anyone could build. If anyone in China had the ability to do what TSMC does, they would already be doing it. That's true for anyone in the world: if they could, they would, and they're not because they can't.

A lot of commentators underestimate or misunderstand the level of sophistication at the design, machine and systems level required to make chips this advanced. They seem to think it's just mechanical arms stamping out chips. That a clean room is just really well-swept. That employees lose days of sleep to handle the tiniest issues because Asians are just extremely hardworking, not because the "tiniest issue" could cost millions of dollars (TSMC managers want a good night's sleep just like everyone else; they're not excited by those 2am calls). 

Thus they don't understand that those machines require constant, careful maintenance, constant supplies of all sorts of weird chemicals and elements not only in the chips themselves but for the etching process. In a war, the gas wouldn't make it to Taiwan, let alone the fabs, and the workers wouldn't either. It would be days, if not hours, before the whole thing went -- for lack of a more accurate term -- tits up. 

Nobody needs to "destroy" or bomb anything. It would just be. It would be an inevitable by-product of war. 

This is what Mark Liu was trying to tell us, and this is what we clearly didn't hear in our haze of "US vs. China, big rivalry, oh no!" 

Mark Liu's words are carefully chosen -- retired founder Morris Chang would not have made him his successor if they weren't -- and there's really no room for discussion on things like "People in Taiwan have earned their democratic system and they want to choose their way of life", that China will "think twice" on the consumer market chip supply disruption they themselves would experience, and an invasion would be "lose-lose-lose".

It matters that this is coming from the head of a company that is neither 'blue' nor 'green'. TSMC stays out of domestic politics in that way, unlike, say, Foxconn's founder Terry Gou. I don't know which way either Morris Chang or Mark Liu lean, and I'm not sure it matters. Both the KMT and DPP have tried to tap Chang for public roles -- or at least it's speculated that they have -- and the company has donated to both parties (as of 2009, they donated somewhat more to the KMT but I don't know what the numbers are now). 

However, it does matter that the consistent message from TSMC is that they want to do business, and war is bad for business (if you're, say, a communist who hates business, fine, but you're probably posting about it on social media using a device that uses a TSMC chip.) 

It also matters that their bottom line on Taiwan differs from Terry "sell it all to China for cash" Gou: Chang has said Taiwan should be a part of the developed world's "friendshoring" -- that is, countries that aren't China -- and Liu is quite clear that Taiwan is Taiwan, and they absolutely do not work with the Chinese military (unlike Foxconn, of which I'm deeply suspicious). This is not a company that will throw its hands up and hand its tech over to China.

If China insists on annexing Taiwan, that means war as is no possibility of Taiwan peacefully accepting subjugation that they do not want. Regardless of US actions, that would render TSMC inoperable. Thus, there is truly only one solution that avoids a global tech sector catastrophe: China must be deterred. 

Taiwan could get what it wants peacefully, if China could indeed be deterred. All it wants is what it already has: sovereignty from the PRC, self-governance. A continuation, and perhaps a recognition of the facts as they currently sit. 

This is not a warning to the US to "not provoke China", as some have taken it. The problem (for once) is not the US, it's that China wants something it cannot have. It's a warning to China, not from the US but from the biggest player in the Taiwanese private sector, to leave Taiwan alone for their own good as much as anyone else's. 

The US isn't going to destroy TSMC because that would happen anyway, as a result of Chinese actions. We must not base our opinions on how to support Taiwan on fairy tales and fabrications.

China is raising tensions all by itself, threatening war all on its own. It would be doing that without the US around, because the core of the conflict sits in Asia. They're not responding to the US, they're mad that Taiwan isn't interested in being ruled by them, and Taiwan is not wrong to want to remain independent.

This is not a discussion of whether the US should or should not bomb TSMC if China invades, because that's stupid. Don't be stupid. 

If China invades, TSMC won't need to be bombed by anyone, because it won't survive the war. The chairman has said that obliquely. There's no hidden meaning, no chiaroscuro of possible outcomes. If China starts a war, this will happen. If that will impact the global economy -- and it will -- then China must be deterred. 

Don't You Forget About Me?

My great-grandmother Verjine and her three brothers, around the time when their father was dragged away by Turkish soldiers and never heard from again. All they were trying to do was leave Smyrna.

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day came and went on April 24th, and despite my best intentions, I couldn't write a thing. I tried to pen something article-like, thinkpiecey, memoirish. But no matter how much I called the black dog of fate, he would not come.

So instead I'll just ditch all the prose about what Armenians might think and feel on this day get on with what I really want to say: 

Restorative justice, international recognition, a meaningful apology -- these things matter. But what really upsets me every year on this date is the way that Turkey and a handful of its allies go balls-out posting ahistorical trash and victim-blaming Armenians, and the way that this rhetoric is alive and well today. Not just from Turkey, but deployed by China against dissidents and perceived "separatists". It terrifies me that seeing the exact same language and tactics portend fresh death.

Every year, there's also a small chorus of spectators to this show who ask whether Armenia shouldn't just get over it, pursue peace with Turkey today, let the past be the past. 

There's historical precedent for this: the Treaty of Lausanne was one big fat Letting Turkey Get Away With It, all because Turkey threw a temper tantrum. Of course, that temper tantrum turned into a war. 

Okay, but so what? Well, if we Let Turkey Get Away With It, we continue to tacitly condone a blueprint for anyone so inclined to commit atrocities and Get Away With It. And if there's a decent chance that the world will decide to ignore your genocide "for international peace and stability" or "we can't do anything about their domestic turmoil" or some such, then exactly what is stopping governments who are so inclined to just...well, commit genocide?

I'm not being hyperbolic here: I don't know if that oft-cited Hitler quote asking "who...speaks today of the Armenians?" is apocryphal (though it's probably real), but there's no way he wasn't aware of the genocide and the implications of Turkey's impunity. 

But let's talk about what's happening right now. Every year without fail, the Turkish government puts out some horrifying press release denying the genocide, without ever explicitly naming the accusations against it. 

I'm especially irritated by the part where Turkey says it does not need to be lectured about its own history by anyone. Bitch, that's my history too. I'll talk about it all I like.

This isn't new. Even before 1915, Abdul Hamid II was denying the Hamidian massacres while simultaneously making excuses for them:

In a rare interview, granted to a representative of the London Times, he declared that the reports of Armenian massacres were 'gross exaggerations.' To the mild inquiries of the English and French Ambassadors, the Sultan's Ministers replied politely, or sometimes not so politely, that the situation of the Armenians was an 'internal matter', and that, in any event, it had resulted from Armenian provocation."

If you realized that, without context, you might have mistaken all this for some Chinese wolf warrior lying about the Uyghur genocide or threatening Taiwan, congratulations. You've got the point.

And if you're wondering how an event they deny perpetrating at all could have also been "provoked", well, lies don't need internal logic. They just need to get pesky foreign countries off your back about all those crimes against humanity. Making sense is a nice-to-have, but it's not a need-to-have.

Back then, all of this -- the side-by-side denial and justification of massacres, the debate about whether Armenians deserved to not be killed en masse, was called the Armenian Question.

You know, kind of like how China and assorted bloviators refer to the Taiwan Question today. As though the words themselves weren't dehumanizing. Even people who should be smart enough to know better sign off on this sort of language as though the humanity of Taiwanese people -- of any people -- is a fucking question. As though this construct has any merit at all.

It is not, and it does not, Bonnie.

This sort of language is a precursor to genocide. 

Turkey's various allies help out -- not just through overt genocide denial, but in making it sound like it was committed by Armenians against Turks:

I cannot stress this enough. China is using the same sort of manipulative language that Turkey employs in its genocide denial when it insists that Hong Kong dissidents are "secessionists" for being unhappy that they didn't get the autonomy through 2047 that they were promised. (Some actually are secessionists, but they're not wrong.) It isn't that different when it calls Taiwanese whom they have never governed "separatists" who will be sent to re-education camps -- you know, the same way Turkey called Armenians "separatists" and then sent them to die in the desert.

Turkey continues to tell the world that recognizing the Armenian genocide is a "mistake". China tells the world to look away from its harassment of Taiwan -- apparently said harassment is fine, but challenging it is a "provocative activity". 

China is, in other words, creating pretexts.

Sometimes, they're post-texts. The Uyghurs whom they themselves terrorize are "terrorists",  and anyone who speaks up merely "interferes in China's internal affairs". The Uyghur genocide, of course, has already begun. China's lies terrorized Turkey into silence, even after the Premier League Genocide Denier itself had called it a genocide! This is some Circle of Life shit, except, you know, the opposite of that.

Anyway, this is already getting longer than I want it to be.

When people say victims of past atrocities and their descendants should leave such things "in the past", move on, focus on a contemporary peace, they miss the point. Not only is it wrong to lecture victims on the point at which they should be "over it" for your convenience, but it's not really about the past at all. It's not even about the future. It's about right now.

When I read sad testimonials and historical discussions about the Armenian Genocide, which are common around April 24th, I'm struck by how much the tactics and language employed back then continue to be employed not only by Turkey in its ongoing genocide denial, but by other countries looking to Get Away With It just as Turkey did.

Often, they do. In what way is China meaningfully hurting from its genocide of the Uyghurs? To what extent is it incentivized to stop? Or to leave Taiwan alone, never engaging in the slaughter it so frequently promises? The answer is not at all. Even people who want to deter China still treat Taiwan like a "question"!

China does these things -- it follows the same blueprint -- because we've learned so little. They're doing it because they can Get Away With It. 

This is what April 24th means to me. This is why it matters. Not because of the past, but right now. I'm less concerned with what happened a hundred years ago than the fact that China is using the same playbook, inventing the pretext now for a genocide in Taiwan.

In 1915, Turkey was able to exterminate Armenians from Anatolia. The world knew, but when Turkey told them to shut up and do nothing, they obliged. When Turkey insisted it never happened -- or that it did, but the "Armenian Question" was an "internal matter" and "provoked" by "terrorists", most countries tacitly accepted this. It took until 2021 for the United States to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Today, China is erasing Uyghurs and their culture from East Turkestan. The world knows, but China tells them to shut up and do nothing, and that's exactly what they do. They insist it's not happening, or an "internal matter", or stopping "terrorists", and most countries are tacitly allowing it.

What year will it be when China decides it can invade Taiwan and ship anyone who resists off to a death camp? How much time do we have before calling Taiwanese "separatists" and the "Taiwan Question" an "internal matter" turns into labeling them "terrorists"? Will telling the world to shut up and do nothing work yet again?

Turkey wants you to forget. Don't. China doesn't want you to notice that they're using the same tactics, the same rhetorical flourishes. Notice.

Armenians were never a question, but they were a warning. And the Taiwan Question is not real -- it's a pretext.

The ROC constitution is not the argument winner you think it is

Continue?

In a spin-off of my last post, I wanted to talk some more about the ROC constitution.

In that post, I described Taiwan independence bait & switchers in that post: people who talk about Taiwanese sovereignty as though it doesn't already exist, but make those statements in relation to China, not in relation to any sort of discussion or debate happening in Taiwan. When it's pointed out that Taiwan is indeed independent of that China, they snottily retort that Taiwan claims to be the "Republic of China", and therefore isn't independent from...that?

Nevermind that they began by talking about the PRC, and the ROC and PRC are different governments regardless. Both governments fundamentally acknowledge this: Taiwan now openly states it, and the PRC talks about how "Taiwan will be ours", which is an admission that Taiwan is not currently theirs.

I mentioned then that a lot of these people will point to the Republic of China constitution, insisting that its wording proves that Taiwan considers itself "part of China", if not the "real China" which claims the territory currently governed by the PRC. 

This is arguably false. I've talked about this before, but have more to discuss, and want to zoom in a little more. As Brendan likes to say, people who want you to swallow China's (or the KMT's) narrative on Taiwan don't want you to learn more about Taiwan. Their arguments work better if you remain ignorant. Those of us who advocate for Taiwan welcome everyone to learn more: the more you learn about Taiwan, the clearer it becomes that it isn't part of China, and doesn't want to be. 

In the spirit of "learning more", I'll be drawing on a useful Twitter thread that deserves a more permanent discussion. 

What are "existing territories"?

In the thread, Drew points out the oft-cited Article 4 which discusses the "borders of the Republic of China": 

The territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly.

I've discussed this as well -- the article never clarifies exactly what the borders are, and that matters -- but Drew takes it further. He points out that the vagueness was intentional, as the boundaries at the time were indeed somewhat fluid and the language of the constitution had to account for that without any change potentially invalidating the document. That's not just his opinion: he's quoting the Council of Grand Justices:

Article 4 of the Constitution provides: "The territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly." Instead of enumerating the components of national territory, a general provision was adopted, and a special procedure for any change of national territory was concurrently provided. [Emphasis mine]. It is understandable that this legislative policy was based upon political and historical reasons.

A years-old Taipei Times piece offers a clearer interpretation of this fairly terse ruling: 

First, Article 4 has been ruled “non-justiciable” by the Council of Grand Justices. Asked whether Mongolia was still a part of ROC territory, the council in 1993 issued Interpretation No. 328, which ruled that the legislative intent of the term “inherent/existing” was specifically to avoid setting down precise boundaries, since the areas controlled by the ROC in China at the time were continually shifting with the tides of the Chinese Civil War. The interpretation thus held that the phrase is a political question that cannot be assigned any fixed legal definition. The practical impact of this ruling is that it is legally impossible to “violate” Article 4, since anyone could assert any notion of “inherent/existing national boundaries.”

Essentially, "non-justiciable" means that the Council of Grand Justices has declined to rule on the meaning of Article 4, as the wording is intentionally vague, which is a fundamentally political issue. Thus, it can mean anything to just about anyone. Which, of course, indicates that it means just about nothing at all.

Article 4 is technically no longer in force, but the same wording ("existing national boundaries") is used in the updated additional article, so I'm applying these ideas to both. There's more to discuss here; it will come up again below.

In other words, the judiciary branch of the Republic of China refuses to enforce any legal interpretation of that article, including that it must include territory currently governed by the People's Republic. At this point, the government that currently runs Taiwan has not actively claimed "mainland China" for decades, and continues to decline to comment on any such claim.

And lest you think that this was some sort of partisan judge hack job: in an otherwise jibberish article, even the KMT praises the wisdom of this ruling! I suspect it was meant to be a bit of a smack at the DPP, who had sought to shed new light on what the constitution means to modern Taiwan by getting the judiciary branch to clarify the so-called territorial claims. However, it ended up being a boon to Taiwan advocates: if the wording of "existing national boundaries" is so vague and political that it cannot be meaningfully interpreted by the court, then it can't really be meaningfully be interpreted by anyone. Therefore, it is not meaningful.

Chen Shui-bian is quoted by the Financial Times (and here, the Mainland Affairs Council) pointing out that the question of dubious claims such as Outer Mongolia aren't even the point -- when the Republic of China was founded, Taiwan was a colony of Japan. A 1936 early draft of the constitution did not include Taiwan, which further shows that these "existing borders" are indeed malleable. 

In addition to the Grand Justices, we've now had two presidents of the Republic of China who have insisted that it is an independent country and does not claim the territory of what the world considers to be "China". Three, if you count Lee Teng-hui and his "state to state relations" (and I do). Every elected leader of Taiwan except one has been clear on this. How many government officials clarifying this will it take before people stop making this dead-end argument?

Let's look at the last part of Article 4. I occasionally hear these "Checkmate, Splittists!" commentators say that this needs to be changed by a referendum, but that's not actually true. 


The Additional Articles

The original article states that it can only be amended by the National Assembly, although the amended article, which dates from the early 2000s, gives that power to the Legislative Yuan. The National Assembly no longer exists, and hasn't since 2005, when the replacement article took effect. 

As Bo Tedards pointed out all those years ago, from the Taipei Times link above: 

Second, Article 4 is no longer in effect. It was replaced in 2000 by paragraph 5 of Additional Article 4, which itself was amended in 2005. Although Additional Article 4 contains almost the same phrase, “the territory of the Republic of China, defined by its existing national boundaries,” surely the use of the term “existing” in 2000 or 2005, without qualification, does not mean “existing as of 1947.”

For the sake of comprehensiveness, here's what that paragraph says:

The territory of the Republic of China, defined by its existing national boundaries, shall not be altered unless initiated upon the proposal of one-fourth of the total members of the Legislative Yuan, passed by at least three-fourths of the members present at a meeting attended by at least three-fourths of the total members of the Legislative Yuan, and sanctioned by electors in the free area of the Republic of China at a referendum held upon expiration of a six-month period of public announcement of the proposal, wherein the number of valid votes in favor exceeds one-half of the total number of electors.

The original additional articles to the constitution were promulgated even earlier than that, in 1991. The early-noughts replacement to Article 4 does differentiate between the "territory of the Republic of China" and "the free area of the Republic of China", but I find it hard to believe that many Taiwanese in 2005 -- one year before I moved to Taiwan -- truly believed that their votes from Taiwan could or should have any bearing on, say, Tibet or Mongolia.

Perhaps a few centenarians and some KMT diehards clung to this, but in 2005 most people in Taiwan identified as either purely Taiwanese or both Taiwanese and Chinese. Almost nobody believed themselves to be purely Chinese, a downward trend that began in the mid-1990s. There's no way the general electorate in 2005 still had some inherent notion that unification was desirable. Not even the pro-China Ma Ying-jeou, elected a few years later, dared to say otherwise at the time.

It's difficult, then, to disagree with Tedards. If the sentence "existing national boundaries" was written in 2005, and the Council of Grand Justices has already said it's a vague, political phrase that takes into account the possibility of changing boundaries, then the boundaries referenced in the 2005 replacement of Article 4 can only sensibly mean the Republic of China as it existed in 2005.

Why do the additional articles exist?

When the original additional articles went into effect, President Lee described the re-defined relationship with China as "state to state" or "special state-to-state" relations. Even China saw this move as a blatant shift toward "Taiwan independence". Here's a nice long turducken quote from my previous post on the topic (linked above):

This article is extremely biased to the point of affecting the quality of the scholarship, but it offers up a real quote from Lee and a taste of how angry China chose to be:

According to the transcript released by Taipei, Lee said that since 1991, when the ROC Constitution was amended, cross-strait relations had been defined as "state-to-state," or at least "a special state-to-state relationship." Cross-strait relations, he maintained, shall not be internal relations of "one China," in which it is a legal government vs. a rebel regime, or a central government vs. a local one. Lee's controversial statement, not even known beforehand by Su Chi, Chairman of Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), sent shock waves to Washington as well as Beijing. [Note: Su Chi is the same guy who fabricated the "1992 Consensus" well after 1992].  

For Beijing, Lee Teng-hui's "two-state" theory was identical to the claims by Taiwan independence forces, that treated Taiwan and the mainland as two separate states. Lee had completely abandoned the unification guidelines of 1991, not even paying lip service to the one-China principle. The spokesman of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office criticized Lee for playing with fire....In Beijing's eyes, Lee had made an open and giant step towards independence. The "state-to-state relation" theory went beyond the limit of "creative ambiguity" around the one-China principle and represented a major shift towards de jure independence. 

As Drew points out, Chen Shui-bian extended the "special state-to-state" theoretical framework, later calling the relationship with China "one country on each side". Although Ma Ying-jeou represented a break from this clear trajectory, Tsai brought it back into fashion, calling Taiwan "independent" (also linked above). In other words, since democratization there has been exactly one president of Taiwan who has conceived of Taiwan's relations with China as anything other than "state to state", and this framework is directly linked to the constitution as it existed after 1991. 


Miscellany: Tibet, Mongolia and the Provincial Council

The ROC constitution tryhards don't give up easily; they'll often point to mentions of Tibet and Mongolia in the document. To that I say: so what? The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission was dissolved in 2017/2018, and most mentions of those old claims are either tied to rules regarding the National Assembly which no longer exists, or play no meaningful role in the current government.

The Provincial Council was also dissolved -- you need to use the Wayback Machine to access its old website. Because the constitution stipulates that something like the Provincial Council must exist, a government worker technically fills the lead role, but draws no additional salary. It exists in name only. That whole framework is a ghost, a shadow. It says a lot about the entire ROC-oriented framework of the document as a whole, frankly.

Cherry-picking these bits and pieces of the constitution to make the case that Taiwan actively claims "all of China" as the Republic of China actually makes your case weaker, because there's just so little there there.

Taiwan does not claim China, nor does it claim to be "the real China". It hasn't since the 1990s and that position has only been cemented in the 2000s. The constitution itself says this, if you bother to read it carefully. Only one elected president has ever paid it lip service, and he's hilariously unpopular. 

The entire thing is a massive straw man: it's easy to argue against Taiwanese sovereignty even when one can't deny its de facto existence if one can point to a document and say, "hah, see? Even Taiwan agrees it's China!" But the document doesn't say that, at least not any longer, and few in Taiwan still believe it should.

To be honest, I don't think these constitutional truthers want what's best for Taiwan, nor are they interested in understanding or learning more about Taiwan. If they were, they'd know this already, or be open to hearing it.


So why not change the constitution?

Taiwan did change the ROC constitution -- that was what the additional articles were all about! 

But, I see the point here, and I'll bite: why not amend the core document, rather than add to it? Why not abolish the vestiges of the Provincial Council? Why officially "delegate" responsibilities for these defunct assemblies to other government agencies, rather than change the document that states they must exist? The Legislative Yuan has that power, so why not do it?

I believe the Taiwanese electorate does mostly want this, but it's a deeply unfair question. Why indeed? If it can be done, and Taiwanese people would likely support it, it shouldn't be difficult to deduce the reason why it doesn't happen: not Chinese control, but Chinese threats. 

Taiwan isn't controlled by China now, so changing it doesn't change China's power in Taiwan (that it has none). So why do it, when they're threatening to slaughter you?

Taiwan absolutely does not want a war, for exceedingly obvious reasons. We can all agree it would be a terrible outcome; the only entity who seems to want war is China. If Taiwan is already self-governing and doesn't need to specifically amend the constitution to maintain its sovereignty, and China has threatened to subjugate and annex Taiwan if it makes those changes, with millions of Taiwanese dying as a result, why would Taiwan do so?

Taiwan can and should make these necessary changes when China has resolved not to use force, not to invade, and to respect the wishes of its neighboring country. Until then, what purpose vis-à-vis the PRC would it serve, at such a terrible cost?

Insisting on constitutional amendments that don't change Taiwan's current sovereignty therefore doesn't make any sense, unless you're looking for a reason to blame Taiwan for China's actions. I suspect most of the ROC constitution truthers are doing just that.

It's that same old Catch-22: insisting that Taiwan cannot be "independent" until it makes declarations or constitutional amendments that may cause China to attack, but then blaming Taiwan for "provoking China" if it actually makes those declarations or amendments. There's no way to win, which is exactly what the anti-Taiwan, China-simping ROC constitution truthers want. 

Don't listen to them. They don't know what they're talking about.

Get Your Independences Straight

I'm done with intentionally obfuscatory discourse

Because I'm super fun at parties, I want to have a little rant about rhetorical lack of clarity and why it plays right
into the hands of CCP trolls, tankies and little pinks. 

The central problem: one can hear from multiple sides some sort of call for Taiwan to "be independent" or "declare independence", or call Taiwan some version of "not fully independent", usually in relation to some threat or snotty baby tantrum from China. Case in point:

“People tend to interpret his position as leaning towards unification. But in his tenure, even until today, he didn’t say anything about unification — or at least he didn’t propose any road map for unification,” Lu (Yeh-chung, an NCCU professor) said.

Rather, Lu said, Ma’s remarks demonstrate his preference for Taiwan’s status quo — neither fully independent nor fully united with the mainland.

First, Lu is wrong: Ma has talked about unification -- he specifically said "don't support independence, don't reject unification" in 2018. Does the good professor think we have such short memories? 

That aside, my question is simple: what on our beautiful green Earth does "neither fully independent nor fully united with the mainland" mean? Does Lu think that the government of the People's Republic of China has some sort of control over Taiwan? Not fully independent from what?

If we're talking about China, there are perhaps a dozen centenarians who still insist that "China" must and can only mean The Republic of China (on Taiwan), plus approximately three of their grandchildren and a couple of old white dudes who actually believe tedious reiterations of this opinion.

Of course, that's slight hyperbole, but it becomes less so every year.

Everybody else conceptualizes that as the People's Republic of China, period. If you say "China" and not "The Republic of China", no meaningful percentage of people think of the government in Taiwan. Even if you do say "The Republic of China", assuming the listener doesn't simply assume you misspoke and meant the People's Republic, it's more common to consider that a weird historical anomaly than actually China. 

And if we're talking about the country that just about everyone imagines when hearing the word "China", then I'd really love for one of these "if Taiwan were to become independent" or "Taiwan doesn't have full independence" commentators to please, for the love of sweet zombie Jesus, tell me what the hell that is supposed to mean.

Taiwan is already independent from that China. If that's what you mean, what exactly would Taiwan declare independence from? So again -- independent from what? How can anyone claim with a straight face that Taiwan isn't independent from the country the entire world associates with "China", when that country has no control over and no governance of Taiwan?

The common retort is some word salad along the lines of "well it's the Republic of China, so it also claims to be China". 

Even if that were true (it's not, and hasn't been for decades), that is not what most people think of at the word "independence". It's not even what the speaker meant in the first place, because again, these bad takes always come in the middle of a conversation about China. You know, the China you just thought of when you read the word "China".

They meant the PRC when they started bloviating, they know they meant the PRC, and switching out China for the government on Taiwan the second they're challenged on that is disingenuous and dishonest. It's not even obtuse, because I think they're fully aware of what they're doing. They expend so much verbiage on China's reaction, China's anger, China's position, China's threats, and they and everyone else know they mean China. 

Even our friend Professor Lu above spoke of Taiwan "not being fully independent" in the same sentence as "the mainland", even though "the mainland" (that is, China -- "the mainland" is not the name of a country) does not control Taiwan at all. There is no way this vaguery is sincere. It's clear obfuscation.

Then they reference Taiwan not having independence, and suddenly, it's a different China they are talking about, because intoning that Taiwan is somehow governed by the PRC is simply not justifiable, and they know it. It's a third-rate magic trick, a rabbit pulled out of a hat except everyone knows the hat as a false bottom. Abracafuckingdabra! 

All this is is a way to keep the old discourse about "Taiwan independence" on life support, as though Taiwan does not already have independence. Why? Well, it's so stupid that I don't even know why, but here's a good guess: they don't want to just admit that the PRC doesn't control Taiwan and never has, because that would probably lead to admitting that it has no claim, and never should get Taiwan. Or they're so balls-deep in outdated rhetoric that they just can't admit they've been wrong since at least 1996. 

Perhaps they think this wording projects an image of centrism and moderation, when it all it really does is announce "hello, I'm so out of touch that my opinion was last meaningful when the Macarena was a hit song!" 

Or, worst of all, they either don't care about Taiwan and just want the issue to go away (for them -- for Taiwanese this attitude on a global scale means lots of people will be slaughtered), or they actually think Taiwan should be a part of China, but know they can't reasonably defend this view. The China Is Taiwan, It's Just Tankie Vibes, Man remix. 

Independence from the Republic of China -- that is, changing the framework of the government that currently runs Taiwan's archipelago -- is a valid concern. The ROC system, the name, the constitution: it's got to go. Taiwan would be better served by a government tailored to its own needs, not one constructed with the notion of ruling that huge chunk of land on the continent. 

But, again, that is simply not what most people mean when they talk about independence. Yes, some deep green activists mean this, and I agree with them. The ROC has got to go. When they say "we are pro-independence", they are always clear that they mean a domestic form of independence, a throwing off of the ROC colonial framework. Crucially, they are almost always talking to other Taiwanese people,  usually in Taiwan. That is the context which allows their audience to understand what they mean. 

They might say Taiwan needs to openly declare this, but a declaration is different from already having something: you might elope and announce it to everyone later, but the fact is, you got married when you eloped, not when you told the world. Taiwan doesn't "become independent" when it announces as much. It became independent when it started fully governing itself, and stopped any active claim to that big country on the continent that we all consider "China", if not before. 1949, 1996 or 2005 (when the National Assembly was dissolved) -- take your pick, they're all well in the past. 

What's more, if these opinionators need to make the rhetorical switch from the PRC to the ROC when discussing Taiwan's "lack" of independence, often without clarifying unless pushed, then they already know that the PRC and ROC are two separate entities. They may not have fully internalized the fact that Taiwan does not want to be part of China, and hasn't claimed otherwise in decades, but they know this. The ROC and the PRC are not the same governments, and it's deceitful to refer to them interchangeably as "China". Either there is only one China -- the PRC, which does not include Taiwan -- or there are two, but even if there are two, they are not the same thing, and the commentariat absolutely knows this, even if they can't admit it. 

Finally, this sort of disingenuousness both assumes and forces discourse on Taiwan's relationship to the ROC to only exist in relation to the PRC. It implies that Taiwan deciding of its own accord to amend its own constitution is somehow related to PRC governance, when it is and should be an internal discussion. The same is true for name rectification (from the country to the airline) or other frameworks that ought to be modified or abolished to better meet Taiwan's needs. While some of these changes are tangentially related to China, the connection is not direct: the government of the PRC has no say at all in the governance of Taiwan.

To make Taiwan's potential choices seem more intertwined with China than they are -- that any action Taiwan takes is fundamentally in relation to the PRC, and cannot exist apart from that as a choice made by a self-governing people -- is to lend credence to China's ridiculous claims on Taiwan, and its subsequent manufactured anger and hissy fits.

The imprecision and its harmful intentionality infuriate me. It's not ignorance, it's purposeful obfuscation, and it must be treated as such. These people are not interested in learning about Taiwan; their objective is to harm Taiwan's international stature and waste your goddamn time.

So let me say it again: if you're talking about China and you mean the PRC -- which just about everyone does -- then it lacks integrity to say Taiwan "isn't independent" from "China", only to switch "China" to the ROC when called out. Stop it. Serious people do not do this. 

Be precise: do you genuinely think is Taiwan not independent from the PRC? If so, please justify this. In what way does the PRC control Taiwan? What would change about Taiwan's governance right now if it were to declare independence from the PRC -- anything at all?

Or do you think "Taiwan independence" means "from the ROC framework"? If so, why did you (most likely) bring it up in a discussion about Taiwan's relationship with the PRC? Did you think your audience wouldn't notice? 

And if you do mean "the ROC", start there. No backsies, no switcheroos. 

However, I would ask that the well-meaning activists and supporters (including myself) who want to see the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan please consider their audience. Are you talking to potential allies abroad who might not realize that your "independence" doesn't mean "from the PRC"? If so, you're likely to confuse them with talk of Taiwan "not having independence", as they imagine that independence to be from China. That is, their conception of China, which isn't the ROC at all. It might be well-intentioned but it's likely to backfire, as it portrays Taiwan as some sort of separatist "renegade province". It's a lot harder to support that than a sovereign nation that already governs itself and has never been governed by the big bully next door claiming it. 

What can no longer be tolerated, however, are all the commentators who aren't concerned with ROC colonialism and instead use linguistic deception to make Taiwan appear less sovereign than it is. 

Lao Ren Cha is going live on YouTube!

Today's the day for a big announcement: I've decided to start my own YouTube channel! 

I've been thinking about this for a long time, but wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger until now. Long-form writing is a relic of the past, and deserves to be abandoned in favor of newer, flashier media. What better way to inject content directly into as many eyeballs as possible than transitioning from Blogger to Youtube?

Content is king, and I will create a lot of it in my new career as a Youtube influencer and star. You will be swimming in so much Lao Ren Cha content, you won't know what to choose! I'll be keeping things relevant, with upcoming videos on exciting topics like: 

Night Market Challenge! What's the CRAZIEST Night Market Food?

Taiwan BUBBLE MILK TEA Tasting Extravaganza!

Top Ten Taiwan Culture Shocks You Won't Believe

Taiwanese SHOCKED! This Foreigner Speaks INTERMEDIATE MANDARIN! 

Lao Ren Cha Talks To Real Taiwanese! Top Ten Things Taiwanese Would Do If China Invaded

Taiwanese People: Just Like You And Me! 

You Wouldn't Believe These Top Ten Taiwan Traffic Accidents!!

Lao Ren Cha Local: We Visit An ANCIENT, TRADITIONAL Indigenous Village For Their Harvest Dance Ceremony

Taiwan Ocean Challenge: We Dive Off QINGSHUI CLIFF! 

Beautiful Fashion Island: Shopping at Wufenpu vs. Zhongshan

In Memoriam: Remembering Our YouTube Team Member Who Dove Off Qingshui Cliff

My Mom Visited Taiwan and Tried DUCK HEADS! 

Top Ten CRAZY Things You Can Buy At 7-11! 

Convenience Island: Is Taiwan TOO Convenient?!

Lao Ren Cha Local: Do Taiwanese LIKE China or HATE It??

Lao Ren Cha x PCHome Collab: Top Twenty-Six AMAZING Items On PCHome You HAVE To Try

We Climbed YANGMING MOUNTAIN! 

IT STINKS! Foreigners Try STINKY TOFU For The First Time

Of course, as I am launching this comprehensive content platform as a career shift, I'll need sponsors. So far we've got some exciting ones lined up: extra special thanks to About Face Skincare, Mr. Sparkle Laundry Detergent and Yu Wan Mei Amalgated Salvage Fisheries and Polymer Injection Corp. To bring the best value to our sponsors, we'll be cross-posting on TikTok, WeChat and Weibo. DM me if you want to collab! 

I'll post a new announcement when the channel goes live. Remember to hit like and smash that subscribe button for all the Taiwan content you could ever want! 

Doing Nothing Wrong

From The Armenians of Musa Dagh (1919-1939) by V. Shemmassian

The man at the top right resembles my great-grandfather, but it's hard to tell 

This is going to start out like a post focused on the Armenian Genocide; I promise that it is related to Taiwan, and there is a point. But I'm going to do this my way -- that is, the long way -- and I only ask that you bear with me, if you like. 

***

Generations ago, two contradictory narratives came out of late Ottoman Turkey surrounding the ongoing massacre of Armenians under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. One was spoken about among diplomats and travelers, discussed in salons across the Western world: a paranoid Armenophobe Sultan was allowing Armenians to be attacked and slaughtered across Anatolia and even in Istanbul. Sometimes these attacks came with a pretext ("revolutionary activity" or "separatists"), sometimes not. 

Of course, these worried people made sympathetic noises but took few if any concrete actions to actually help the Armenians.

It's not an uncommon belief that the Armenian Genocide began and ended around 1915, that it came like a wave, and then receded. This is not true: the Hamidian massacres began in the late 19th century, ebbing and flowing and continuing into the early Turkish republic until at least 1922. 

Despite being called the "loyal" millet, or minority community, Armenians, among others, were second-class citizens. Possession of weapons was more heavily restricted, taxes were higher, and legal rights fewer. 

In this narrative, the Armenians had done nothing at all; they were prosperous in banking and commerce and living happily under Ottoman rule until one day, the crazy Sultan decided to exterminate them, and that bloody legacy was perpetuated by the Young Turks. (To be clear, it is well-documented that Abdul Hamid II suffered from mental health problems later in life and was paranoid specifically about Armenians). 

Of course, the Ottoman state narrative was wildly different: this was an "internal" matter, an "exaggeration" of events or a "provocation" by Armenian separatists and terrorists. 

If you think this sounds quite a bit like the way China spins its own stories about Taiwan, as well as actual parts of China such as Tibet, East Turkestan and Hong Kong -- exactly. But that's obvious; all governments lie, but authoritarian states are both the biggest and worst liars. It's not even my main point. 

To hear the Armenians tell it, they were loyal to the Sultan, while still celebrating the advent of the Turkish republic, presumably at its nascent stage when they believed it might result in fewer massacres, not a tsunami of fresh killings. Few were revolutionaries; none were trying to topple or break away from the state. We weren't separatists, they said. All we ever wanted was equality and justice. 

To hear the Turkish side, they were indeed separatists engaging in terrorist acts, and had to be stopped. Of course, this narrative always stops short of genocide: we had to stop them, we were provoked into the massacres that you are exaggerating and also that we did not commit. 

Frankly, the Turkish government continues to embarrass itself by perpetuating this narrative.

One of these narratives is obviously false. Let's leave aside the fact that I had ancestors in the death camps and not all of them survived, that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, children at the time, barely survived the 1909 massacres and my great-great grandfather was murdered in Smyrna by Turkish troops as the 1922 fire raged. Plenty of documentation attests to the truth of the events, the official narrative makes no sense, and anecdotal accounts fill out the picture. From Michael Arlen's Passage to Ararat: 

In the fall of 1895, a group of German and Swiss schoolteachers were traveling through eastern Turkey. They passed a village where not a soul appeared to be alive. "A terrible plague," explained the guide. The schoolteachers saw blood on the walls of houses, and a village square where jackals and vultures still fed off the unburied dead. 

It's easy to assume that therefore, the Armenian story must be unimpeachable. The loyal millet, living peacefully under the imperial yoke, never engaged in the activities of which the Ottomans -- and later the Young Turks -- accused them. If this is true, the Armenians did nothing. 

The thing is, this isn't quite right. They didn't do nothing. 

The Turkish story may be embarrassingly stupid, but the issue with the Armenian narrative is that it glosses over the most important point: that they did nothing wrong. 

Why exactly is this a problem? First, it makes it easy for Turkey to defend their position: if there were no Armenian revolutionaries, how do you explain all the Armenian revolutionaries? 

Because they existed. That, too, is well-documented.

The main groups were the Dashnaksutiun (the Dashnaks) and the Hunchakyan Kusaktsutyun (the Hunchaks). The Dashnaks are known in English as the ARF, or Armenian Revolutionary Federation -- emphasis mine. Both groups were at least nominally socialist or social democratic; the Dashnaks perhaps less so, whereas the Hunchaks were more overtly Marxist. The two groups began as a united front, with the Hunchaks splitting off over ideological differences: if you think leftists like to get into big, fractous spats with each other rather than fighting their common enemy, then I would like to welcome you to join the People's Front of Judea, not those apostates running the Judean People's Front.

Fun fact #1: both parties still exist. Fun fact #2: my great-grandfather Mihran was a Dashnak and fedayi (resistance fighter) in the 1920-21 war for Armenian independence. I admire that a lot; I do hope that if the time ever comes for me to stand up for what is right despite immediate physical danger, I will do so. 

Theoretically, the Dashnaks were more reform-minded, wanting to better the position of Armenians within a larger Turkish state, whereas the Hunchaks advocated a breakaway Armenian state. The Dashnaks worked with the Young Turks to overthrow Abdul Hamid II, and the two groups worked together up until the 1909 massacres, which were promulgated by the new Turkish government (the Sultan had just been removed from power by this revolution) against Armenians, primarily but not limited to Adana, near my great-grandmother's hometown of Tarsus.

That is to say, these groups did consist of separatists and revolutionaries. Not every Armenian was a member; I'd gather most weren't. However, it's historically inaccurate to claim that they meant no harm to the Ottoman government. Some absolutely did. I do not believe this was wrong; for a time, they shared the same goal as the Young Turks, who are now celebrated in Turkey. Clearly, the Turkish government doesn't think opposing the Sultan was "wrong" either, as long as it was Turks doing it. 

Let's look at a specific example: one side says that the 1894 massacre of Armenians at Sasun was "unprovoked", the other says it was provoked because Armenians refused to pay taxes. The truth is that the Hunchaks indeed encouraged them to stop paying, because the taxes levied on Armenians were unequal and unfair, and the whole situation was a lot more complicated than a protest over taxation.

Without getting into the local, factional violence, there were indeed Armenians calling for reforms that directly threatened the state. Throughout, the Dashnaks and Hunchaks did indeed use revolutionary tactics to resist Ottoman oppression. Some of these forces were at play in Sasun; they emerged again during the bank occupation in Istanbul, which precipitated further massacres.

That's not doing nothing. But I generally support resisting murderous dictators. I am in favor of protesting unfair taxation and tribute. If the regional or central government is sending in troops to specifically punish you for refusing to be exploited by the other people they sent in to harass you, you should fight back against both the local perpetrators and the central government. 

That's not "doing nothing", it's doing nothing wrong. 

While I don't think separatism is always the best way to solve political problems -- sometimes it is, sometimes it just creates more problems -- I understand why Armenians at the time might have thought it a good solution. They were being treated like dirt; prosperity was gained not through privilege but adversity. Under those conditions, especially in the sociopolitical environment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wouldn't you also want to advocate for either reform or independence? 

To ignore this and insist that they lived their lives placidly oppressed is not only to give official Turkish accounts credibility that they do not deserve, but also to flatten the story. It perpetuates the myth of the "perfect victim": do we really want to imply that only some genocide victims are worth recognition and compassion? Do we really believe that the only argument against mass murder is to say the victims didn't resist their murderers? Or that "separatism" is an excuse for genocide? Do we really want to erase the agency of targeted groups to resist?

It is ethical and right to stand up against injustice. It is correct to push for equality, and if the government lording over you won't give it to you, you either have to change the government, or rid yourself of it. 

Whether you are independent like Taiwan and requiring only international recognition, or a part of some larger oppressive state and seek to break free, you are not required to accept second-class status up until the point that the state begins murdering you, never daring to set off a bomb or stage a protest. This should not and cannot be the threshold for deciding who is and is not a true victim. 

I hope you've followed me this far, and see how this connects not only to Taiwan, and every other group fighting CCP oppression. 

To hear the Chinese government tell it, Taiwan (and the US) are relentless provocateurs; their story veers between insisting most Taiwanese understand that their ultimate destiny is to be "reunified" as good Han subjects under the rejuvenated Chinese nation but are misled by a minority of "splittists" or the United States, and screeching that Taiwanese "separatists" are the instigators wholly responsible for Beijing's continued threats of violence. It's an internal matter, they say. You're exaggerating, China would most prefer a "peaceful" resolution but, you know, those pesky separatists! It's their fault that we may be forced to wage war, followed by brutal re-education camps. 

They do the same in East Turkestan and just about anywhere else that suffers under CCP repression. Like the Turkish government, they claim that Uyghur terrorists forced them to open the concentration camps that they also claim don't exist. You're exaggerating, they repeat. Those are vocational schools aimed at helping Uyghurs, not jailing them. Except we had to open them because of all the terrorists, and we had to forcibly detain people sent there. But you're exaggerating. 

If that fails, we're admonished not to worry ourselves over a far-off genocide because apparently genocide is acceptable if it's an "internal matter". 

Certainly I don't condone violent acts against civilians, but if we're talking about which side has killed more people, it would be the CCP. I may not be a fan of bus or subway bombs, but I have all the empathy in the world for people fighting the systemic erasure of their identity and culture. Such erasure never works, it always leads to violence, and the CCP started it. 

It forces us to consider the ethics of actions within a given context: Ottomans sending in troops to harass Armenians was wrong; Armenians occupying a bank with pistols and explosives was not wrong, per se. The American South wanting to secede because they wanted to continue the institution of slavery was wrong; East Turkestan wanting to cleave itself from its murderers to end a cultural genocide is not wrong.

I could draw out similar scenarios in Tibet and Hong Kong, but I think the point is clear.

This may seem obvious, but I don't think it is. When we portray the bad guys (and the Chinese government is unequivocally the villain here) as going after people who did nothing at all, the next step in that thought sequence is to consider "something" to be worse than "nothing".  As in, compassion comes more readily if they weren't revolutionary, or separatist; but if they were,  some might think the consequences are justified. But they actually did set off subway bombs! They did occupy a bank! They did resist police officers! They did plot to assassinate the Sultan! They actually are separatists!

Then it becomes "bad" to be a separatist or revolutionary. Those words sure sound so scary on the news! But again, if the government you're fomenting a revolution against is oppressing you and others, being a revolutionary is not wrong. 

Think of it this way: how much easier is it to advocate that the Chinese government should stop disappearing poor innocent Uyghurs who were just minding their own business? Compare that to persuading others that, yes, in fact there was and is resistance to Chinese rule in East Turkestan; that yes, there are Uyghur "separatists" by the basic definition; that resistance occasionally turns violent; but that Chinese oppression in East Turkestan is still unjustified and if the CCP can't do better (and it can't), perhaps East Turkestan actually should be independent. 

The same is true in Taiwan, although there are no thorny questions of civilian attacks to contend with and unlike East Turkestan, Hong Kong and Tibet, it is not legally a part of the People's Republic of China no matter how much the CCP screams otherwise (if it is, show me the binding international treaty or accepted convention that says so. It doesn't exist).

It's so easy to say that Taiwan has done nothing at all, but that's not true. Taiwan's done quite a lot: first and foremost, it democratized and in spite of Chinese missile tests, stayed that way. War is a deeply unpopular notion, but most do intend to defend their country against China if necessary. When China gets its hackles up about "separatists" we may roll our eyes, but most Taiwanese do not want to be a part of China. A large number -- likely a majority, depending on how you define the issue -- are indeed "separatists" by China's definition. The problem is not the desire for continued sovereignty, but China's definition.  

Taiwan does seek international recognition, even when doing so "angers" China. They do identify primarily as Taiwanese, which China cannot abide. They do reject China's conditions for "peace", which begin with the so-called 1992 Consensus and end with accepting annexation without a fight. They don't give up and accept second-class international status; it may be forced upon them, but you'll always encounter resistance (even if they're just online comments reminding, say, a sporting organization that "Chinese Taipei" is bullshit and everyone knows it).

In everything from calling Taiwan an "independent country (named the Republic of China)", changing the passports, cultivating ties with the US and other countries and any number of small actions, Taiwan tests where China's red lines are.

They do this because those red lines are unjust and do not deserve respect. Taiwan is right to resist them, reject fabricated agreements from decades ago, turn down Beijing's poisoned offer of "peace". 

That's not nothing. It's exercising agency in a thousand small ways: it's nothing wrong. 

By China's definition, Taiwan actually is provoking China. That's not doing nothing. It's just doing nothing wrong: again, the problem here is China's definition.

If we don't believe that, then the logical conclusion is to insist that such "provocations" are wrong simply because China does not like them: that is, giving credibility to the abuser in this messed-up relationship. It's to say that Taiwan should clamp itself down and do less, do nothing. Let itself be a victim. Never raise its voice. Accept ever-decreasing space in the international community, let its autonomy be chipped away.

The ways in which Taiwan's story and agency are being flattened in international media are not exactly the same as Armenia's a century ago. People then either seemed to believe that Armenians were hapless, agency-less victims, or that they deserved what they got for being separatists and revolutionaries. 

In Taiwan's case, the danger lies in portrayals of the country as some unpopulated rock fought over by the United States and China, as though the people of Taiwan haven't made their own decisions about their sovereignty and self-governance. Taiwan's very real desire to remain separate from the People's Republic of China is the entire reason why the conflict exists at all. 

China is indeed threatening Taiwan because of what it deems to be "separatism", not US "provocations" --   it is the will and agency of the people of Taiwan that is central to the issue. Chinese painting of Taiwan's views as US-created constructs is a lie, because they know they don't have a strong argument against the truth: that Taiwan itself wants continued sovereignty, and it has that fundamental right of self-determination.

If it melted away, and Taiwan placidly announced that would do anything at all for peace, including meeting China's demands, there would be no conflict. That will never happen, which may mean war. To steal from a great artist of my parents' generation, Taiwan would do anything for peace, but it won't do that. 

This does not mean -- it cannot mean -- that Taiwan's will and agency are wrong. They are not. 

Taiwanese don't act like Dashnaks or Hunchaks; they don't need to, because the would-be oppressor they fight does not control them. Someday, it might be necessary: while some might submit, others will certainly resist. I hope that day never comes, but if it does, I'll support them. Hell, I might be making Molotovs or growing sweet potatoes for the resistance fighters. After all, they'd be right. 

Nobody desires a Syria-like situation in Taiwan, but that's the most likely outcome if China "successfully" annexes Taiwan. Still, Taiwan will be right, and China will be wrong.

Wanting equality, justice, freedom and human rights is fundamentally ethically sound. That may be revolutionary; in some cases it may be tantamount to separatism. Fine, I say. Let it be revolutionary, let it be separatism if it must. It's our job to understand this, and not rob people facing an oppressor of either agency or compassion, when indeed they deserve both.