New Delhi:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has ended the year with a threat over Taiwan, saying “no one can stop the reunification” with China. He said this while addressing the nation on New Year’s eve. Beijing has, for long, stated that the entire nation of Taiwan is part of China. It has also shown an overt and muscular posturing by carrying out air force and naval drills around the island nation.
Beijing and Taipei represent two diametrically opposite ways of life. While Taiwan is a democracy, China is a communist country. In recent times, Beijing has intensified pressure on Taipei and has made all possible efforts to isolate the island nation from the rest of the world.
China has also carried out three rounds of major military drills since Taiwan’s democratic election saw President Lai Ching-te come to power in May. Irked by the latest election, Beijing has said it will not renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. The last of these military drills, carried out earlier this month, was the largest in years according to Taiwanese officials, though Beijing has remained quiet over the manoeuvres. China has also violated Taiwan’s airspace on several occasions.
In his New Year’s speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping said, “Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our blood ties, and no one can stop the historical trend of the reunification of the motherland.” President Xi’s comments come at a crucial time – just three weeks before Donald Trump takes office as US President.
Taiwan is a key point of contention between Beijing and Washington. Taiwan is US’s strategic ally in Asia and Washington is Taipei’s largest supplier of weapons too. Defending democracy over communism has also been a principled decision of the United States – the Cold War with Russia was entirely based on this principled stand.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINA AND TAIWAN
China and Taiwan are separated by the Strait of Taiwan – a waterway that connects the South China Sea to the East China Sea between the two nations.
Before the communist revolution, led by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, China was, for a brief period a democratic nation. There were three President’s in what was then known as the Republic of China (now the official name of Taiwan). The Republic of China became a sovereign nation in 1912 after the fall of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. This ended China’s imperial history.
Between 1912 and 1949 China saw four governments – The provisional or interim government in 1912, the Beiyang government from 1912 to 1928, which was led by the military; the nationalist government from 1925 to 1948 led by the Kuomintang; and Constitutional government from 1948 to 1949. The Constitutional government was overthrown by the civil war in China. The Communist Party, led by Chairman Mao overthrew the government in a crushing revolution, which later spread to Tibet and Xinjiang too. The constitutional government had to flee to Taiwan.
Between the mind-1920s and late-1930s, the Kuomintang had unified what was originally China (without the currently occupied nation of Tibet, and then regions of Xinjiang (part of East Turkestan Republic) in the west, and Soviet-controlled Manchuria in the east – a region separating rest of Russia and Mongolia from current-day North Korea). The Russo-Japan war saw Russia cede southern Manchuria to Japan in 1905, and decades later, in 1931, Japan took over all of Manchuria. Subsequently, during World War-II Japan invaded China.
The Kuomintang was led by Chiang Kai-shek, who was elected President of the Republic of China till the revolution by Mao Zedong forced him and his Kuomintang party to flee to Taiwan in 1948 and set up a government in exile. The United Nations recognised Chiang Kai-shek’s government as the legitimate government of China until 1971. It was the Republic of China which originally got a permanent seat to the UN Security Council – a seat originally offered to India, which had denied the offer as it was the founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Taiwan today is a democracy, but many nations in the world do not have diplomatic ties with it due to pressure from the People’s Republic of China – Chairman Mao’s party, currently led by Xi Jinping.
