There are several million Chinese-Americans residing in the US and half a million Taiwanese-Americans. The number of Chinese-Americans is growing rapidly because many Chinese graduate students manage to remain in the US after their studies and because of the smuggling of workers from China.
Although a minority of Chinese-Americans, typically of Cantonese descent whose forebears emigrated to the US in the 19th century, still support the ROC, a growing number of Chinese-Americans support the PRC, particularly in regards to its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Prominent Chinese-Americans sometimes write opinion pieces in the US papers to support Beijing's positions.
A common refrain is that the US should promote peaceful unification of Taiwan with China, without selling out the interests of the people of Taiwan. This is an oxymoron and an impossible task. Over 85 percent of the 23 million Taiwanese are against unification. They prefer the status quo of a de facto independent nation.
After decades of struggle against the KMT's rule, the people of Taiwan have built a thriving free market economy and a democracy which respects human rights. China is a repressive authoritarian state governed by the monolithic Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For the US to pressure Taiwan to forfeit its hard-won freedom and accept the CCP's harsh rule would violate a cardinal goal of US foreign policy -- to promote the universal values of democracy. Such perfidy would ruin US credibility, scuttle the US-Japan security alliance, and create dangerous instability in East Asia.
Another misinformed claim is that Taiwan has historically been an integral part of China's sacred territory which should never be allowed to split from China. To claim Taiwan is an indivisible part of China is to merely parrot Beijing's propaganda.
In the past 400 years, Taiwan was ruled by the Dutch, the Koxinga Kingdom, the Qing Dynasty, Japan and Chiang Kai-shek's KMT, but never by the PRC. As a result of its defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895, in perpetuity.
Since 1895, Taiwan has been ruled by a central government in China for only four years, from 1945 to 1949. In 1945, Chiang's troops occupied Taiwan on behalf of the allied powers but the ROC never took title to Taiwan. In the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan merely gave up its sovereignty over Taiwan, without specifying any beneficiary. Taiwan's history may be characterized as an incessant struggle for liberty against alien rulers. Taiwan has been separated from China for long periods of time.
The reality is that Taiwan is a sovereign state, separate from China. To quote President Chen Shui-bian (
The Taiwan Relations Act, the basic law which governs US-Taiwan relations, says the objective of the US is to preserve and expand the human rights of the people of Taiwan.
The right to self-determination is a basic human right enshrined in the UN Charter and in the 1966 International Covenant on Human Rights, to which both the US and China are signatories.
Chinese-Americans are fully aware of the Beijing's govern-ment's violation of human rights. These include the killing of hun-dreds of Falun Gong practitioners through torture, imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of dissidents in labor reform camps, mistreatment of Tibetans, system-atic harvesting of human organs from executed prisoners for profit and the slaughter of thousands of students at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Yet there are entirely too many unconscionable Chinese-Americans who would be happy to have such a government imposed on the Taiwanese from the safe perch of their far away life in the US.
Still another theme is that the US should not treat China as an enemy lest it becomes one. But the US has always been friendly and polite to China. It is China which is baring its fangs. China's mass media is tightly controlled by the security agencies. Yet there is widespread, virulent anti-American rhetoric.
On Sept. 11 last year a group of Chinese reporters visiting the US were overwhelmed with glee over the terrorist attacks on the US. They were promptly sent back to China by their irate hosts. China has helped Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in building a better air defense to shoot down US jet fighters. China's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states in the "axis of evil" is well documented. China is actively developing the capability to launch a blitzkrieg against Taiwan. China is expanding the number of ICBMs targeted at the US homeland and testing new ICBMs with multiple nuclear warheads.
Should the US blithely help China build its economy and its military power, hoping China will become a peace-loving nation? That would be a foolhardy policy. After 150 years of humiliation by Western powers, China has a deep sense of aggrieved nationalism, compulsively driving it to first become the hegemon of Asia and then to challenge the US for its "rightful" place as the Middle Kingdom, to become the undisputed superpower under the heavens. It is in the interest of the US to resolutely discourage such ambitions and to steer China toward the path of democracy and peaceful economic development. To earn the respect so badly coveted by the Chinese, China needs to learn to respect human rights and join the ranks of civilized nations. Chauvinism and military aggrandizement will only lead the Chinese people to calamity.
Chinese-Americans should be careful, lest in unthinkingly supporting Beijing's belligerent expansionism, they end up grievously harming the national interests of the US, Taiwan and yes, China.
Li Thian-hok is a freelance writer based in Pennsylvania.
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