Taiwan is Chinese for Dummies - Part 3
by Luís Garcia
WESTERN HYPOCRISY
Content made on Kapwing
The claims to Taiwan are not much stronger. The Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan “in perpetuity” to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, and the Kuomintang took over in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. The People’s Republic has never, in fact, ruled the island. After losing to Mao Zedong, the Kuomintang, under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, retreated to Taiwan in 1949 to claim the island as the consolation prize in the civil war."
[The Coming Collapse of China, by Gordon G. Chang]
Gordon's appalling contradictions are a perfect reflection of Western contradictions in matters of colonization and imperialism. After admitting Taiwan was Chinese until China was forced to cede it to Japan by the means of force (Japanese war of aggression and consequent treaty legitimizing the plunder of the defeated nation), the author posits that Taiwan was never Chinese, and ends admitting the defeated side of the Chinese civil war (KMT) ended out in Taiwan! Basically, Gordon tries to convince the readers that 1 plus 1 is 3 or 4, despite the fact he already typed 2, the correct answer.
Denial of the strategically critical territory to China, with the protection of Guomindang remnants becoming official U.S. policy from June 1950 as General MacArthur among other hardliners had long advocated, played well into the hands of more extremist anti-communist elements in the American leadership.PRC control of Taiwan would, according to prior statements by the general, allow American adversaries to deploy ten or twenty air groups, serve as a major forward operating base for submarines, and allow enemy forces to increase air efforts against American bases such as those on Okinawa by 100% as well as against Western-controlled shipping lanes.He further warned that Beijing could provide bases on the territory to the Soviet Red Army, compensating for the latter’s overall weakness at sea and complementing its already predominant power on land, stating: 'Formosa [Taiwan] in the hands of the Communists can be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender ideally located to accomplish Soviet offensive strategy and at the same time checkmate counteroffensive operations by United States Forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines.'He equated the importance of this asset as a base for aircraft alone to 'ten or twenty aircraft carriers.' Denial of this territory to the PRC was thus a major strategic benefit gained from the Korean War’s outbreak and a major loss for China and the communist world."
Or, as the host of Bay Area415 explained, the control of Taiwan was a US tool to encircle China as the invasion of Vietnam was. In his words:
Like in Vietnam, we really don't care about Taiwan. It is more of convenience, it is a proxy for our military to get a good concave against China".
Please watch the video:
The simplest way to understand what the host of Bay Area415 exposed is to look at this map showing the unjustified, unfair, and partially illegal siege the US rogue state imposes upon China:
The situation of the Diaoyu Islands is one of the most outrageous examples of US imperialism against China. These Chinese islands, occupied by Imperial Japan until the end of WWII, were supposed to be given back to the Chinese administration after the defeat of the Japanese and the liberation of the countries and territories they had invaded. Instead, aside from setting free the most despicable Japanese criminals responsible for the Nanjing massacre, the killing of at least 20 million Chinese, the most draconian program on experiments on living human beings (Unit 731), and many other appalling crimes (read Redacted Reality - The Japan you refuse to acknowledge), the US decided to give the Chinese Diaoyu Islands to Japan, thus stealing the victim to compensate the aggressor in a very clear example of Western supremacy applied to the reshaping of world's map, and comparable to the contemporaneous injustices created by the French mandate and British mandate in the Greater Syria that resulted in the balkanization of Syria and in the creation of the artificial state of Israel.
The most disturbing aspect of the Diaoyu Islands affair is that most human beings never heard about it, which is no surprise when one realizes how much energy the West spends censoring it, like mistranslating the movie Tricky Brains (made in Hong Kong) with subtitles missing the mention to Diaoyu Islands clearly said by the character, replacing it by the vague "our place".
Back to Taiwan, and to finish the issue, what else to say when even servants of the US rogue state like veteran US diplomat Chas Freeman realize and admit how right China is in its claims over Taiwan? To all those Westerners with (conscious or unconscious) supremacist mindsets preventing themselves from listening to Chinese perspectives on China issues, listening to Chas Freeman on Taiwan and Hong Kong might result in an epiphanic experience:
This excerpt can also be watched on VK (click here). The full interview can be watched on The Grayzone's YouTube channel (click here).
***
WESTERN DOUBLE-STANDARDS
If, in the perspective of many Westerners, places with hundreds of years of history as part of China (like Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, or Taiwan) are not part of China and deserve independence, and everyone has to acquiesce to such view of the world, well, in that case, it will be provided here a non-exhaustive yet long list of places occupied by Western countries that, by these same Western standards, definitely deserve independence.
But, first of all, for all those Caucasians holding US, Canadian, New Zealand, or Australian passports (among others)... if they support the idea that Xinjiang is an Uiguristan and that Chinese Han settling in "Uigurs lands" is bad and that Han people have to "get out" of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, like Vox did in this video... well, in that case, what the hell are they doing in the US, Canada, New Zealand or Australia? They should be coherent and go back to their homeland! They should kindly go back to Europe, thus giving an end to their own hypocritical sinophobic rhetoric.
A clarification: the author of this article does not support such mass migration. The idea is only to expose the astonishing double-standards.
***
Finally, let's give a deep look into the many colonies Western nations still occupy all over the planet, starting with the faraway colonies of the US and several European nations in Central America, South America, Africa, and Oceania, and ending with adjacent and nearby colonies in Europe.
A few of these examples of faraway colonies were not inhabited before being colonized by Westerners, and the reader may find it unfair to have them included in this list. Yet, there is a good reason to have them mentioned here: to compare how far are those territories from Europe and the US, in comparison to the distance between China and its Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, which many in the West and in Asia claim not to be Chinese territories but rather Vietnamese, Filipino, Malay, Bruneian or, imagine, Taiwanese!
FAR WAY COLONIES
USA - Actually not very far away from its mainland, in the Caribbean Sea, the US occupies Puerto Rico, Navassa Island, U.S. Virgin Islands, and a portion of Cuba named Guantanamo Bay. The US and its supporters claim Cuba leased it to the US, dishonestly ignoring the fact the contract (Cuban–American Treaty of Relations, 1903) has no validity because the then US-imposed puppet regime of Cuba had to choose between say "yes" or be militarily invaded by the US. In the same region, the US claims as its territory the banks of and Bajo Nuevo and Serranilla.
Then there's the Kingdom of Hawaii, annexed after the overthrow of its government by US nationals, and nowadays considered by the US as one of its states. Not far from Hawaii but 5,000 km away from the US West coast there is the Midway Atoll, in which the US built an island-military base (Sand Island) of the very kind of the ones the US criticizes China for having built in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos in the South China Sea. The Midway Atoll is part of the Northern Mariana Islands territory, under US administration.
Still in the Pacific Ocean, the US controls many other islands and atolls, some of them also hosting US military bases: Johnston Atoll, Wake Atoll, Palmyra Atoll, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, and Kingman Reef.
Finally, the US continues to occupy the entire nation of Guam and part of the Samoan nation known as American Samoa.
To help understand the full extent of the US Empire, US journalist Abby Martin produced the very informative documentary "United States” to Imperial America: Our Hidden Empire.
Denmark - This tiny European nation still occupies the territory of the Inuit people known in the West by Greenland, an island 50 times bigger than Denmark itself.
Norway - In the Artic, Norway controls Svalbard and Jan Mayen. In the Pacific, Norway controls Peter I Island, and in the (south) Atlantic Bouvet Island, both incredibly far away from Norway when compared to distances between mainland China and Taiwan or the Spratly Islands.
The Netherlands - Thousands of kilometers away from Europe, in the Caribbean Sea, the Netherlands still occupies the nations of Sint Eustatius, Saba, Sint Maarten, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba. These last three are only a few kilometers away from Venezuela and have naval bases used by the US rogue regime to threaten, blockade, and conduct military coup attempts against the Bolivarian nation.
United Kingdom - This European country is still in possession of a large network of colonies in all the oceans of the planet. In the Atlantic (and the Caribbean Sea), the UK occupies nations and territories like Turks and Caicos Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension Island, Saint Helena, Montserrat, Falkland Islands, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, and Anguilla.
In the Pacific, the UK occupies Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie, and Oeno Islands,
In the Indian Ocean, there is the infamous case of genocide being committed by the UK in the British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Islands). With all these appalling examples of colonization, the British come last in the right to criticize China's jurisdiction over Tibet or over islands in the South China Sea.
New Zealand and Australia are committing slow-motion cultural genocides in their colonies in the Pacific, either by creating incentives for depopulation of Pacific nations ruled by them whose natives flee to the mother countries, either by incentives for the depopulation of independent nations under Anglo-Saxonic blockade whose natives flee to go work for slave-salaries in the depopulated ones under Australian and New Zealander sovereignty. André Vltchek already gave the full picture of it.
Australia - Australia still occupies Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Heard Island, and McDonald Islands.
New Zealand - In what they call the "realm of New Zealand", New Zealanders occupy the nations of Cook Islands, Nive, and Tokelau, and control a series of other islands throughout the South Pacific:
Portugal - Portugal still controls 2 archipelagos in the Atlantic, Azores and Madeira. After the Portuguese democratic revolution in 1974, led by communist and socialist forces, the US administration had a plan to make the Azores an independent country in order to keep its strategic Lages Air Base in the eventuality of seeing Portugal's mainland falling into the USSR sphere of influence. As Henry Kissinger declared at the time:
We have a contingency plan to take over the Azores (...) that would be stimulating Azores independence.”
Spain - Spain still controls the Canary Islands in Africa, and also occupies several tiny territories in Morocco.
France - The French regime and its vast network of colonization of many nations of this world who deserve independence, seek independence, yet are continuously repressed by this imperial and colonial regime.
In Africa, France occupies the nations of Réunion and Mayotte.
In South America, France occupies the nation of French Guiana.
In the Caribbean Sea, France occupies the nations of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, and Saint Barthélemy
In North America, France occupies the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
In the Pacific, France occupies many nations organized under a culturally genocidal set of administrative regions that put many native peoples under the rule of a sole colony, like in the case of French Polynesia (Tahiti). Still in the Pacific, the French regime also occupies the nations of New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna,
Finally, France disputes the sovereignty of Vanuatu's uninhabited islands, namely Matthew Island and Hunter Island, in a pure example of arrogant colonialism that claims that territories nearby an independent Oceanic nation should rather belong to a European country 17,000 Km away! Chauvinism goes as far as what the French citizen
Finally, there is a group of nations claiming parts of the very remote Antarctica. Besides the claims of relatively close nations like Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia, the European nations of France, Norway, and the United Kingdom also believe to be the owners of parts of Antarctica. Brazil and Uruguay also have unofficial claims over Antarctica. China doesn't!
ADJACENT AND NEARBY COLONIES
Like in China, there's a complex multitude of ethnic groups living inside countries ruled by other dominant ethnic groups, such as Gypsies, Turks in Macedonia, Hungarians in Romania, Gagauz people all over Eastern Europe and the Balkans, or the ethnic Serbians living inside the entity Republika Srpska inside Bosnia and Herzegovina. If all this is possible in Europe, why isn't it the case for China?
If one looks carefully, it is possible to find in European nations what Westerners accuse China of doing: to absorb entire nations into a larger and internationally recognized country. For instance, Brittany or Basque Country in France. Galicia, Catalonia, or Basque Country in Spain. In Scandinavia, the Sápmi nation is occupied by Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Russian Federation. And so on, as there is a big quantity of similar cases all over Europe.
So, why can't Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang be part of China, as many Western netizens and their friends in places like India and East Asia claim nowadays?
More importantly, there are still real examples of European colonies in Europe. European nations or part of European nations ruled by other European nations. Italy rules over Sicily and Sardinia. France rules over the nation of Corsica. Denmark rules over the Faroe Islands. Spain occupies 2 territories of its African neighbor of Morocco: Ceuta and Melilla. Conversely, the United Kingdom still occupies the southern tip of Spain: Gibraltar. The United Kingdom also occupies part of Ireland (Northern Island), the Channel Islands on the coast of France, and, incredibly, still claims full sovereignty over 2 portions of Cyprus: Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
Given all this, how can Western nations criticize China's claims over its historically Chinese island of Taiwan, directly stolen by Japan and later indirectly stolen by the US?
We could still check the historic territories lost as punishment after defeat in world wars, like the Romanian territory ceded to Bulgaria, or German territory ceded to Poland. There are many other examples. No one is claiming here those lands should change hands once again. No, the point is: given all these Western discrepancies, how dare Westerners say Taiwan is not China just because the US decided to interfere in the Chinese civil war between the CPC and the KMT? And how come China, a victim yet a winner of WWII, unlike the victim Poland that received German territory, rather lost territory to the aggressor, as is the case of the Diaoyu Islands?
A final provocation for all those who love to love India and love to hate China: how come the supporters of the balkanization of China never call for the balkanization of a very diverse India comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, with extremely different ethnic groups divided by several different religions and a multitude of different languages and cultures?
For all the reasons above, yes, China has legitimate sovereignty over Taiwan, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Diaoyu Islands, Spratly Islands, and Paracel Islands.
Luís Garcia, Thailand