Taiwan’s sovereignty is under unprecedented threat as Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing seek to coerce Taiwan into submission even as they threaten to take the country and its outlying islands with military force. Chinese leaders may insist there is “One China”, but Taiwan has always been distinct. The last time mainland China truly controlled Taiwan was in 1895, before the Spanish-American War in which the United States acquired Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba.
Over the past 500 years, China’s true control over Taiwan can be measured in just a couple decades. Whereas Chinese authorities today cite Qing-era control over Taiwan to support their claims, they ignore two historical problems: First, Chinese nationalists considered the Qing to be Manchus, not Chinese and, second, the control was often more theoretical than real as Taiwan’s population largely remain in rebellion and off-limits to meaningful Chinese presence.
In 1949, as Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party’s advance toward Beijing, Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek relocated to Taiwan as the base of the Republic of China. Like Mao, Chiang Kai-Shek considered himself president of “One China” incorporating both the mainland and Taiwan.
This political impasse continues to the present day. Unable to convince the Taiwanese people to subordinate themselves to the Chinese Communist dictatorship, Taiwan thrives as a country. Even unrecognised internationally by most countries due to Beijing’s pressure, Taiwan is a thriving democracy and home to the 14th largest economy in the world in terms of gross domestic product.
Taiwan hopes not to defend itself alone. While the United States has always sought strategic ambiguity about its willingness to come to Taiwan’s defence, the pressure to do so would be enormous. The whole reason why the United States now maintains a US Marine rotational presence in Darwin, Australia, is to set a line from which to respond outside of the range of Chinese aircraft and air-launched missiles. Japanese strategic thinkers imply that Japan would also rally to Taiwan’s defence.
Meanwhile, Singapore hosts the fuel storage facility for which U.S. naval aviation would depend upon for any Pacific operations east of Guam. Taiwan would also expect other regional states threatened by China—Vietnam, the Philippines, and South Korea—to support it diplomatically against the backdrop of blockade or invasion.
As India is both the world’s largest democracy and a country whose territory China occupies, many Taiwanese assume they would also have Indian support. Perhaps New Delhi would. But Taiwan must recognise that respect for sovereignty goes two ways.
Prior to moving from China to Taiwan and before Mao Zedong moved into Aksai Chin, Chiang Kai-Shek voiced expansionist claims to Indian territory. That his successors have failed to renounce them undermines Taiwan’s case before the international community. After all, if Taiwanese leaders continue to uphold illegitimate Chinese territorial demands against India, why should anyone take Taiwan’s own demands for respect of its own sovereignty seriously?
In 1947, Kai-shek published China Destiny in which he set the stage for China’s conquest of Tibet and Mongolia. While China had never truly controlled Tibetans and the indigenous people of the Assam highlands, Chinese ambition to do so had always been high. Shortly before its collapse, the Qing dynasty sought to establish a military presence in Tibet. In the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, local authorities overran Chinese garrisons.
The Republican leader not only argued that Tibet was a province of China and Tibetans and Mongolians were simply minorities living within China, but he also laid claim to several hundred kilometres of Indian territory. Kai-shek subsequently argued that “Inner and Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang (Xinjiang) and Tibet are each a fortress essential for the nation’s defence and security”. After India’s Independence, Kai-shek’s government sent several notes to New Delhi.
After the attainment of independence to India, the Nationalist Government in China sent several protest notes to it against the administrative control over Assam’s northernmost hilly tracts. Kai-shek’s representatives later protested to New Delhi after India invited Tibetan representatives to the 1947 Asian Relations Conference in Delhi. Kai-shek’s ambassador to India made clear that the Republic of China recognised neither the McMahon Line that established the de facto boundary as the watershed between the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau, nor the 1913-14 Simla Convention that gave British India effective control over the Assam-Tibetan borderlands.
The British government debated a sharp protest to Republican authorities in Nanjing when China redrew maps to include a new Xikang province violating the McMahon Line, but did not want to make waves. The problem did not go away. In 1946, Republican officials told the British that they “reserved the right to claim compensation for any losses they suffered as a result of British encroachment”.
The Chinese Communist Party’s initial hostility toward India in many ways represented continuity over a new direction. Both independent India and Communist China blamed their dispute on the legacy of the British in India and Republicans in China, but the changed political situation in both countries did not shake loose an agreement for Ladakh and Assam. The only real difference between the dispute before and after the Chinese Communist Revolution is that Mao Zedong was willing to use military force to enforce China’s position.
More than a century after the Republic of China asserted claims to Indian territory, it is time the Republic of China renounces them. If Taiwan argues there is one China, it will cease to exist under the power of the Chinese Communist Party and mainland China. If Taiwan argues it is a separate country, a finding history supports, it should not carry water for Chinese Communist imperialism.
In many ways, Kai-shek encapsulates the original sin of Chinese claims on India. While Taiwanese embrace the Republican leader as their founding father, they can acknowledge his maximalist claims were unjust and unsupported by history. To do so might not only put Taiwan on the right side of history, it would delegitimise President Xi Jingping’s aggression along the length of China’s borders.
Taiwan is correct that democracies should stand together against the backdrop of Chinese aggression. Taiwanese authorities might begin by recognising they must give and not only receive. Neither Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo, nor Manila should accept anything less from Taipei.