Taiwan-China Relationship

Re “On Taiwan, Beijing Learns to Yawn,” Commentary, Aug. 5:

Taiwan was never an “integral part of historic China.” In its 400-year history the island was successively ruled by the Dutch, Spanish, Ming-dynasty loyalists, the French (from 1884-1885), the Ch’ing dynasty (from 1887 through 1895), before it was ceded to Japan in perpetuity under the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. None of those occupying powers bothered to ask the Taiwanese people what they wanted.

Taiwan’s international position is unclear because of the shortsighted policies of Taiwan’s Kuomintang authorities themselves, who for far too long claimed to be the legitimate rulers of China, and the “creative ambiguity” of the “one-China” policy as laid down in the Sino-American communiques of 1972, 1978 and 1982, which were arrived at without any democratic representation of, or consultation with, the Taiwanese people.

The one-China policy is now outdated. The notion that “Taiwan is part of China” is an anachronistic fiction. The native Taiwanese (85% of the population of the island) had nothing to do with the civil war in China, but from the 1940s on became unwilling victims when the Kuomintang moved to the island and established its repressive regime. We don’t want the future of our homeland to become a hostage to that civil war.

MEI-CHIN CHEN, Editor

Taiwan Communique

Chevy Chase, Md.